CLEVELAND, OH — A few years ago, when I was still playing for Barcelona in Cleveland before I stepped onto the NBA floor. cavaliers Veteran point guard Ricky Rubio felt the stifling pressure of a game he had to win night after night. The expectations abroad were tremendous. Anything less than consistent brilliance was not accepted.
When he left Europe and moved to the NBA, Rubio learned how to navigate nightly turbulence. He avoided getting caught up in the draining emotional roller coaster often caused by the regular season like a marathon.
He started seeing the big picture.
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“It’s one of the hardest things in professional sports,” Rubio said recently. “My mantra is never too high or too low. To understand how to be the best version you have to go through mistakes. intend to do.
“Eight straight wins in the beginning didn’t mean you were going to win the championship right away. We’re the team that didn’t make the playoffs last year.We’re really young and learning.Learning comes through experience and sometimes mistakes.It’s not coming soon.I believe in this team. That’s why I’m back here.I really believe we’re going to get better, but it will take time.”
That big picture perspective came through the Cavaliers’ locker room, especially in the face of the demonic Moon.
When the NBA schedule was announced about six months ago, members of the organization immediately turned their attention to January. Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff also participated. January’s ruthlessness struck him even more as he helped arrange travel and planned practices, shoots, and shoots.
“When you look at the number of games and the amount of travel, you can see that it’s going to be bearish,” said Bickerstaff. “January is a tough month, but every team in the NBA has tough months. I won’t give you a pathetic party, you have to go out and work, so when you have to face a little bit of adversity during the season, it’s amazing to be put at a disadvantage in training camp. That’s not the point.
It’s a similar scenario each year, with Disney on Ice at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse sending the Cavaliers on their first long trek of the month. But this time her January grind was more relentless.
16 games in 30 days. Where more than half is on the road and no Cavaliers are to be found. 13 versus playoff/playin teams. 2 sets back to back. Eight time zone changes. Donovan Mitchell’s exhausting return to Salt Lake City. Ricky Rubio’s emotional debut after recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament tear in 380 days. That’s just the schedule related part.
Mitchell missed six games this month with an injury after playing sick for several days.The Cavaliers are 2-4 without him. All-Star contender Darius Garland he missed twice. Dean Wade, a versatile forward who will become a staple of Cleveland’s nightly rotation, returned from a seven-week absence in late January. Since his comeback, the Cavaliers are his 3-2 record.
With Wade and Rubio back, Bickerstaff is trying out different line-ups and combinations while trying to reintegrate the duo and find the minutes for everyone. Or given that we don’t want to expand to 12, this is an impossible task.
A minor rotation tweak led to short-term flabs.
“Adding these bodies to the team during the season is one of the hardest things to do,” said Rubio. We have to figure out how to be the best version of ourselves. We have the tools and weapons to be a dangerous team and I think people feel that. By the way, it’s part of the process, we have to learn.”
After a strong start, kicking off the campaign with an 8-1 record and raising expectations even higher, adversity has hit and the Cavaliers have slowed slightly in recent weeks. They haven’t won him more than three weeks in a row.
As a result, Bickerstaff have been criticized for their lack of in-game coordination, sometimes predictable offense, roster management and decision-making, misplays after timeouts, and minute allocations. Some of that criticism is justified. Bickerstaff isn’t perfect and has a lot to prove, especially in the playoff series. Among them are the nonsensical, understandable ignorance of his role in setting culture, managing personality, creating special team chemistry, and forcing the team to embrace a defensive-first mindset. , over-the-top, radio-type commentary on sports talk. He also plays hard (mostly) every night and has repeatedly recovered from double-digit deficits.
He’s done it despite juggling 19 different starting lineups and a still-flawed roster that lacks the most important elements of team building: shooting and two-way wings.
Cleveland’s January record of 8-7 includes a short-handed unforgivable loss to Golden State, an embarrassing throwaway in Utah and a road misstep in Memphis. -21 record is a formidable Eastern he’s 5th in the conference and 7th in the NBA Poor performance.
Never mind that the Cavaliers are #1 in Defensive Rating, #10 in Offensive Rating and #2 in Net Rating. Or that he is one of three teams ranked in the top 10 on offense and defense. Or having the second best points differential in the league.
Counting just 15 games this month, the Cavaliers are 10th in defensive ratings, 12th in offensive ratings, and 7th in net ratings.
Before the empty Los Angeles Clippers were demolished on Sunday, Bickerstaff said, “We thought the game we had on the table could end in a closeout, but this is not a league to skip steps. “We have to handle business, but there is a learning process. See where we started to build this thing where it is now, and We’re way ahead of us. Looking at the group that’s among the top teams, how many teams are there that are 21, 22, 23 years old who are their main targets? We are in a great place.Obviously we left a small amount of food on the plate due to the circumstances, but the results exceeded our expectations.”
Boston, Milwaukee, Brooklyn and Philadelphia have always been and should be in a different tier, but it’s hard to argue when comparing Cleveland to other top teams.
Philadelphia started 1-4. Mighty Milwaukee had multiple losing streaks, including four gamers. Boston somehow lost to Orlando’s rebuilding three times and already he has five losses in six games. Even star-studded Brooklyn has had two of his four-game slides, including his most recent one following Kevin Durant’s injury. The Nets are 4-6 without Durant.
What the Cavs have been through can be frustrating and disappointing, especially given the nature of some of their failures.
The 73-win Warriors no longer exist. Neither do the Jordan-era Bulls. All candidates have flaws. And Cleveland’s clock doesn’t tick as fast as other clocks.
Road records are ugly. Late-game mental breakdowns and fourth quarter collapses can be hard to stomach. But it’s all part of the journey.
The Cavaliers have said for months that their goal is to peak in April and May, not January or February. Given the youngsters on this roster, and the several health and schedule-related circumstances associated with their current records, it’s safe to say that even without an outside addition to the trade deadline, they’re likely to be on track for the rest of the season and beyond. There is reason to believe that they can continue to grow organically. This aggressive front office improving their roster by February 9th should not be discounted either. .
“We’re a playoff team right now, but we’re working on something bigger,” Rubio said. If I had to lose a few games along the way to do well, I’d take it.
Mitchell, a disciple of Rubio, had the same idea.
“The biggest thing is understanding and giving us more grace as a group,” Mitchell said Monday. “A lot of us haven’t been where we want to get to, so we have to understand that a lot of the teams we play for know what it takes. I know how to approach each night.I understand the energy they bring.We all want to say we want to learn, we want to be the 2nd seed right now, but at the end of the day, we don’t.Build and grow. And the season is not over yet, look at the big picture, I think we’re doing it well, but be patient with yourself and be what you want to be. We understand that we are growing to
Before leaving on his most recent expedition, Bickerstaff spoke to the team on the topic. Those chats are regular. It was the very latest.
With the All-Star break approaching, entering Dog Day of the NBA season, and the second easiest schedule remaining, Bickerstaff thought it important to know where they were. Not just the standings, but how much we have evolved over the season and where we can still improve.
“People who haven’t played in a while will have a minute to put their bodies back in the lineup and start thinking about rotations,” Bickerstaff said. We all get stuck in the moment, especially in games, and it’s frustrating to see what’s available, but when you look back and take a look, it’s the worst thing you’ve ever experienced in a situation like this before. There’s no team without it, every team in this league has lost 3 in a row, 4 in a row, 5 in a row.It’s part of the deal.There’s a reason why we play 82 games.Again, I we are in a good place.
“You are striving for an end goal and hope you are in top form when that end goal comes.”
Time will tell. But that time is not now.
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