Where is your mindset Cleveland Cavaliers fans on this near-beginning of 2022? Were you expecting your favorite basketball team to have a record of 20-16 midway through the season? Are you worried more today than you were a week ago before the team lost three games in a row this past week?
The Cavs got off to a fast start this season thanks to a variety of reasons. Most notably, they drafted a young and talented big man named Evan Mobley who has stepped onto the court and added a whole new dimension to this team that has opponents taking notice that the Cavaliers are a much-improved team and ready to contend. They also added a few important veteran players like guard Ricky Rubio, who was making an immediate impression on the team, and helping the young nucleus of players like Isaac Okoro and Darius Garland.
Unfortunately, the team got hit with a variety of issues recently. Their starting guard Darius Garland was placed into COVID-19 health and safety protocols, and hasn’t played in the last three games. Rubio, who was substituting for the missing Garland, then suffered a season-ending ACL injury to his knee in the closing minutes of a recent loss. The COVID-19 issues that affected most of the players and this new injury to Rubio have all of us fans on the edge of our seats waiting for this team to collapse as they’ve shown in past seasons.
Now the team is in the midst of a three-game losing streak. Has that collapse begun?
This and other questions have all of us shaking our heads trying to get a pulse on this team after they started so well to start the year. The Cavaliers did add an old veteran guard in Rajon Rondo to the team on Friday via trade from the Los Angeles Lakers to try and patch up the meek guard spot position on the team. Will he help?
We’ll discuss that as well as we look at three big questions for the Wine and Gold squad for this week ahead.
Big question #1: Will Rajon Rondo help this team?
The short answer is yes. He’s been in the league since 2006. He originally played for the Boston Celtics for nine seasons and helped the Celtics win an NBA championship back in 2008. Since those years he’s moved around a lot and played for seven other teams. He was most recently playing for the Los Angeles Lakers.
In the last five seasons, his career numbers from minutes played, to assists, to points scored have all declined drastically. He’s 35 years old so there aren’t too many more years in the tank for the once-regular NBA All-Star.
With Rubio out now for the season, Rondo’s veteran presence in itself will be a big plus for the Cavs. But don’t expect the same type of statistical help that Rubio provided the team, especially coming off the bench like Rubio had been providing. Rubio was averaging 13 points a game and almost seven assists a game in 28 minutes off the bench.
Rondo, on the other hand, hasn’t averaged more than 10 points since the 2015 season when he was playing for the Sacramento Kings when he averaged 12 points a game. He also hasn’t played as many minutes over the last several years as Rubio was with the team.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Cavaliers try to work Rondo in with those extended minutes. Going from playing 15 minutes to 30 minutes of playing time might have more of an adverse effect on the older Rondo.
However, adding a former star in the league to this core of young Cleveland talent certainly is a bigger plus than a negative. With this recent slide in games, mostly because our guard play especially on the defensive end of the floor has been a mess, it’ll be good to get a veteran guy on the court to hopefully steady the team like Rubio was doing.
Big question #2: Are the Cavs starting their annual collapse?
With the Cavs starting so well and getting to a season-best 20-13 record a week ago, there was a certain excitement floating through the Cleveland air that had fans and others taking note of the new and improved squad. But the team has been hit hard by COVID, as most of the players have been knocked out for a week or two.
The injuries are starting to grow, too. Their main scoring guard Collin Sexton was lost for the year with a knee injury back in November and now the backup guard Ricky Rubio was also sidelined with a serious knee injury.
A year ago, the Cavaliers got to a record of 10-11 on the season and then spiraled out of control and finished at 22-50. With this year’s team, there are too many new factors that would say that the team is not going to lose control of the season.
Like was mentioned earlier, adding a savvy rookie like Evan Mobley to the team is making a difference and his game will only keep getting better. The other guard Darius Garland, who is currently out because of Covid, has stepped up his talents, even more, this season. He’s averaging close to 20 points a game this season. His assists average is up to 7.3 this year too. Jarrett Allen, one of the other big men for the team, is also having an outstanding year. His point average has taken a significant hike north up to 17 points a game. You add in his career-best 10.7 boards a game and you have a very talented group of very young players.
It’s important that this team try and get a win in at least one of these next two home games against the Indiana Pacers or Memphis Grizzlies to at least stop the bleeding with this latest losing streak. This team is also capable of winning six games in a row, as they showed a few weeks ago.
Do they end up stalled at 20 wins or can they get back to playing the kind of basketball that got them to this point? Defense is the name of the game and in this recent stretch of games, this team has failed multiple games to play consistent defense especially at the perimeter of the defense. Having Garland and Rubio out has caused this shift in poor play. Hopefully getting Garland back and adding in a veteran like Rondo will help.
The Cavaliers have blown huge leads in this recent losing streak. They had a 21-point lead against the New Orleans Pelicans a few nights ago and a 15-point halftime lead against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night. The team’s defense at the point of the opponent’s attack on the outside was almost nonexistent and, in both games, the Cavs lost in the second half. That’s a bad trend and that needs to be corrected.
Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff has to do a better job of helping get that corrected as well. With that let’s discuss this new contract extension for the Cavs coach because it has me concerned.
Big question #3: Why did the Cavs extend J.B. Bickerstaff’s contract until 2026-27?
I’ve shared my opinion on the Cavaliers head coach in the past. In general, I wasn’t sold on his skill set as a head coach, his ability to maximize his team’s strengths and help create a consistent winner in the Cavs. Bickerstaff’s track record in his career hasn’t been great.
He only has one winning season in his coaching past. That was in 2015-16 when he finished with a 37-34 record with the Houston Rockets. He has a 132-203 overall record as a head coach. In my previous article on this subject, I compared how he and former Cavaliers head coach Lenny Wilkens were very different from each other. Their biggest difference as I see it is in their approach to coaching and their demeanor on the sideline.
Maybe I’m the only one that notices this, but Bickerstaff always seems agitated when he’s coaching. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit agitated but you rarely see him happy. He argues calls made by the referees on his team or the other team all game long. In my experience, that kind of hounding of the referees isn’t good for the game. These young players for the Cavs are then witnesses to that approach and that wears on them. Then you see the young, inexperienced players arguing with the referees or opponents as well.
Again, maybe this glimpse at the coach is off-base but I’d like to see a coach that is in more control of their emotions. That’s where I see this big difference between him and a coach like Wilkens. Wilkens would argue with the calls and such but you never saw him enter the court and try to get to a referee to argue and then have his own assistant coaches have to hold him back and not get a technical foul called on him like he did a few games ago against the Boston Celtics.
You might think I am nitpicking, and maybe I am, but extending a contract to a coach that’s never really shown any consistent success in his career is a real leap of faith in my estimation. I hope I’m wrong.
While it looks nice on paper now with the Cavs currently winning, I still question Bickerstaff’s approach and how much this supposed “new culture of winning” is because of Bickerstaff or more because these young, talented basketball players are improving their game naturally and playing for each other more than just the coach making that happen.