Heading into their game on Monday night at the San Antonio Spurs, the Cleveland Cavaliers were coming off winning two of their three games last week at home versus the Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder, and one should’ve expected them to win on Monday.
The Spurs have had a bunch of injury woes already this season, much like the Cavs, and with Jakob Poeltl being out on Monday, Cleveland seemed set to have their way on the interior, and perhaps in pick-and-roll when needed.
The Cavs got Donovan Mitchell back from him missing the past two contests with lower leg soreness, but with the Spurs being 8-18 coming into Monday, despite their two consecutive wins, Cleveland should’ve been able to handle this one even without Mitchell.
Nonetheless, that’s not what occurred. The Spurs controlled the game for most of it, and were ahead for most of the contest by 10-plus points, and they led by 16 going into halftime. At one point, San Antonio held a 19-point lead deep into the third quarter as well.
Credit to the Spurs, who moved the ball well for much of the game, made plays in transition, were active in the paint, and also in some sequences, the likes of Devin Vassell and Josh Richardson made a bunch of difficult shots when they needed them. Those two players were crucial off the bench for San Antonio, as they had 16 and 24 points, respectively, and Richardson made five triples.
The Cavs did seemingly flip a switch to close the third, and they turned up their effort in the fourth quarter, and eventually, clawed their way back all the way to being down two, and Evan Mobley had a chance to tie the contest with 37.2 seconds left. He made one of two free throws, the Cavaliers would then get stops, but fell just short in a scrambling sequence, as Darius Garland missed an open corner triple, and Mitchell’s pass attempt was picked off.
Ultimately, Cleveland’s comeback effort was simply too late, and the Cavs just couldn’t make shots enough through three quarters to give themselves a quality chance here in a 112-111 loss. Their road woes continued, with the Cavs being only 5-9 now on the year on the road.
So with that said, let’s get into our stud and dud for the Cavs from Monday’s loss to the Spurs.
We’ll start with the stud here, in Caris LeVert.