It’s probably still tough for some Cleveland Cavaliers fans that based on how much of the regular season had been, that they didn’t secure a top-6 seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs. Cleveland finished out the regular season stumpling toward the finish, and ended up losing 7 of its last 10 games.
The Cavaliers instead finished the regular season as the #8 seed in the East, and were set to instead have a chance to make the postseason via the play-in tournament, which decides the #7 and #8 seeds.
The Cavaliers faced the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night in Brooklyn, the club they recently lost a back-and-forth one, at least somewhat, to on Friday night. The Cavaliers were fighting an uphill battle for much of it, but to their credit, stayed the course before ultimately losing by 7 to the Nets, largely due to the superstar shot-making duo of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Leading into the game, I did expect the Cavs to be within striking distance, but how the game eventually ended was not that surprising, given the skill level of Durant and Irving, and with other key shooters around them, such as Patty Mills. Even with Ben Simmons still not available, and it being uncertain if he will be in the postseason, Brooklyn is such a difficult team to defend throughout games, and Bruce Brown as a secondary playmaker hurt the Cavs.
On the plus side, from the Cavaliers’ perspective, they’ll have another shot to make the postseason via the play-in, as they’ll face the Atlanta Hawks, who crushed the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday night in #9-10 play-in game.
Cleveland will host Atlanta on Friday night, which while it’s not the Nets level, is another potent offensive team, and they’re far better than their record indicates, in my opinion. Injuries were detrimental to them, similarly to the Cavaliers, this season.
Along those lines, we’ll stress three things that the Cavs have to do to land a victory over the Hawks on Friday night and get into the postseason.
With that, let’s start with the #1 point of emphasis for Cleveland in this one versus Atlanta.