Cavs News: More road woes, Mitchell appreciative, stingy CLE defense

On Friday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers were looking to finish out taking two of three games on their latest road trip.

Cleveland had split the trip to that point, and coming into the game versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, was seemingly in decent shape after dismantling the Houston Rockets on Thursday night. Even with it being the second night of a back-to-back, the Cavs did cruise the night prior, and in the contest had a solid first half also, and were up by seven heading into the break.

Unfortunately, though, the second half was a different story, as despite nice games from Evan Mobley and Darius Garland, the Thunder outscored Cleveland by 21 points after halftime, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was so difficult to account for all evening.

SGA had 35 points, eight assists and five rebounds, and OKC was able to get a scoring lift from Jalen Williams (17 points) and Josh Giddey (15 points), in particular.

Now, the Wine and Gold was again without Donovan Mitchell, which didn’t help their cause after the break, but the group just wasn’t able to pull ahead by nearly enough in the first half and in the second half, the upstart Thunder largely controlled things.

The Cavs will hope to get back on track after this one; even still, that second half was especially rough, with the fourth quarter being less than stellar, to say the least. This team needs to clean things up on the road, where they’re now 10-16 on the season.

More Cavs news

On Thursday, it was announced that Donovan Mitchell is going to be an All-Star starter. Others Eastern Conference starters included Kyrie Irving, Jayson Tatum, Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Mitchell is amid a career year with the Cavaliers, following his trade acquisition from the Utah Jazz last offseason, and thus far, he’s amassed 28.3 points, 4.8 assists and 4.0 rebounds per game. He’s had a career-best three-point shooting clip at 39.6 percent and true shooting rate, too, at 62.0 percent.

Mitchell has been incredible for the Wine and Gold, and recently in an interview with reporter Serena Winters of Bally Sports Ohio, he expressed how he appreciative he was for fans helping him to be named a starter.

50 percent of the voting for the starters comes by way of fans, 25 percent consists of votes from NBA players and the remaining 25 percent consists of votes from a media panel. Still, based on what Mitchell has done this season to this point, he is more than worthy of his first All-Star starting nod, in his fourth All-Star appearance. He should receive a warm welcome back, again, in Utah.

Throughout this season, we’ve again seen how the Cavaliers are a team that is driven by their defense. After they had a resurgent campaign last year sparked by that end of the floor, and the Mobley-Allen duo, the Cavs have followed that up this season. Currently, the Cavs defense ranks first in the Association.

In his latest installation of the 10 things he likes and doesn’t like, Zach Lowe of ESPN (subscription required) highlighted how the Cavaliers defense has once again been a stingy bunch in 2022-23. In his Cleveland shoutout, he emphasized how Mobley and Allen’s length and mobility smothers passing lanes and plays a huge role in closing gaps for opponents, but in the same breadth, Lowe detailed how Cleveland’s backcourt defenders have helped them rotationally off-ball as well.

Make no mistake, the Cavs are at their best when they’re feeding off their defense, and Lowe’s piece drove that home. As the club gets near full-strength, hopefully we see that on display more and more as the season nears February.

NBA news

Based on how strong the play has been leaguewide this season, there are naturally going to be some notable All-Star snubs altogether, and there were bound to be some for All-Star starter nods. In what was likely the one that jumped out the most, Joel Embiid, who is undoubtedly in the thick of the MVP race once again, was the top All-Star starter snub.

Embiid has had 33.4 points, 9.8 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 1.7 blocks and 1.1 steals per game this season for a surging Philadelphia 76ers squad that is currently second in the Eastern Conference. There was going to be somebody that was a prime snub heading into it, but Embiid has to be the name that rose above the rest in that realm. He’ll be among the top All-Star reserves from either conference.

Another news/relevant story that popped up from Friday involved more deadline talk. In that spectrum, Sam Quinn of CBS Sports ranked the 20 best players who could change teams in February.

Quinn mentioned names such as Russell Westbrook, the Cavs’ own Caris LeVert, and an oft-rumored trade candidate in John Collins, among others. As Quinn alluded to in the piece, this should figure to be an active deadline; we’ll see what transpires from now through Feb. 9.

Next up: The Cavaliers will face the LA Clippers back at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Sunday night, in the first outing of a three-game homestand.