Cleveland Cavaliers: Having … Fun?!
By Joshua Howe
The fourth quarter of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ game against the Los Angeles Clippers may have been exactly what the doctor ordered. It was the first time (since perhaps game one) we’ve seen the Cavs have any fun as a team.
Shots started falling, defense brazenly appeared and the players actually seemed to reveal an ephemeral moment of relief in which they felt warm and fuzzy enough to let a few smiles show. Their body language improved suddenly, with LeBron James‘ tough and-one bucket early in the quarter being the first example.
After he drove hard to the rim, got hit, hung in the air a moment and dropped home a bank shot, he strutted up the baseline confidently and with a flair that has been missing this season.
It was the sort of game that fans love to watch. No longer was it a chore to watch Cleveland as they struggled to do literally everything. Instead, it was just a basketball game. A fun one.
Then, as the squad’s confidence rose, the Clippers made a final push to get the game within four points. Cleveland called a timeout with 47 seconds remaining.
And something magical happened.
The Cavs ran a play to get, if not Kyrie Irving, then Tristan Thompson the ball. LeBron inbounded the pass at bullet speed as Thompson broke free from his man and caught the orange right in front of the basket. He went up immediately, got whacked and still managed to put the ball in the hoop.
The first thing James did was let loose a snarl of triumph, while pointing directly at his coach, David Blatt, who clapped furiously and bobbed his head in knowing.
The Cavs never relinquished the lead after that.
The moment was pure bliss and one can only hope that it’s the spark the Cavaliers need to finally unite as a team. With all of the talk of Blatt and LeBron and their disconnection, this play was something special. It was a player and his coach, working together to make a game-changing swing happen. This was the first time we’ve seen anything like that from those two, who have seemingly been butting heads since day one.
Blatt may not have been the coach James picked himself, but if LeBron is beginning to warm up to him, it can only mean positive things. They are the only two who can right the swaying ship in Cleveland.
This is a great start. Sometimes, all a team needs is to have that one single game where they play well and hit on all cylinders to ignite them to a better future. Having fun and enjoying what you do is an enormous, unquantifiable factor in this. That’s how it is with all jobs: a person will try harder at something they love to do.
When LeBron was in his first season with Miami, his team swayed and faltered and sputtered all over until they arrived in Cleveland for James’ first return since leaving. He torched the Cavs that game, seeming to feed off of all the hate the crowd piled on him, using it to fuel his insane basketball powers and destroy the Cavaliers so severely that he didn’t have to play the fourth quarter.
Another, more recent example of a culture change is still happening right now in Detroit. With the trade of Josh Smith, and the infamous moment in which Stan Van Gundy yelled this during a timeout, the Pistons are suddenly playing very good basketball.
They’ve bought in to what their coach is saying and have developed a trust in their teammates. Most importantly, they’ve discovered an identity. They know who they are and, as it turns out, when things are clicking like they have been, they’re a pretty decent basketball team.
This is the sort of thing the Cavs have yet to have had happen. Their identity is still a mystery to them. What are they on offense? Where does everyone fit in? How will they be able to plug their gaping defensive deficiencies?
Perhaps this game, and more specifically, that moment of James acknowledging Blatt’s successful and clever play, will be the first ember in the fire. Looking forward, it would be awesome to be able to go back to this day and say, “Yeah, and that’s when they turned things around.”
Of course, they still need to solve part of the puzzle that wasn’t present during that moment of elation in the Clippers game: Kevin Love, who sat on the bench, looking on and resting his injured back.
How Love is used in the offense is up to Blatt. Perhaps now that James seems to be a little more involved with Blatt, the two can get together and discuss the offense. Love has been used incorrectly almost this entire season, and thus it has made him look awful. He’s become a scapegoat for disappointed fans and a mockery for Minnesotans who have been watching Andrew Wiggins grow quickly into something special.
But this is just a small part of the bigger picture here, which is, of course, that the launching pad for the Cavaliers may have finally come. The details can always be worked out later. Use the spring and jump as high as you can while it’s there for you.
And maybe, just maybe, this team will start being fun to watch again.