Cavs: Report Card for Cleveland’s West Coast road trip

Cavs Bench Play: C

The team has primarily been using three-to-four players including Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love to come off the bench and provide some consistency. In that first win against the Nuggets Love came through nicely with 22 points in only 20 minutes.

In the next victory against the Clippers Love added 10 points and 10 boards. Rubio added 15 points and three each of assists and boards.

Rubio came up big in the Lakers game but didn’t get much support from any other bench player. He had 18 points, 4 assists and 6 boards in the loss.

When the Cavs played the Phoenix Suns they got a good game from Love early as he added a double-double with 11 points and 12 rebounds. Cavs forward Cedi Osman added a nice 20 points in an extended-minutes game for him. A few other bench players got into the mix in the loss to the Suns when they entered in the 3rd quarter and played inspired ball in their limited minutes. Forward Dean Wade finished with five points while teammate Dylan Windler finished with eight points.

Coach J.B. Bickerstaff: C

Coach Bickerstaff got his team to play some inspired ball the first two games of the four-game swing out West but that all went south quickly against the Lakers and Suns. Some will point to the idea that the Cavs ran out of steam. I don’t agree with that assessment. His players are very young and it’s not that difficult to play the schedule they did. Instead, the Wine and Gold started rushing things and got sped up in these games that early on looked like good solid efforts.

That is on the players, but I also blame Bickerstaff. He has worked with this team now going on three seasons. He should have a better feel for his team and he doesn’t.

I also don’t care for his use of the bench at the moment. I understand Love and Rubio coming off the bench when he goes with the bigger starting lineup but that has limited minutes for players like Windler and Wade off the bench. We’ll see what this next stretch of games look like but I’d like to see Bickerstaff experiment more with different combinations of players until he finds a better winning formula. .