The Cleveland Cavaliers were brought back to earth after losing to the New York Knicks on Thursday.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Maybe the Cavaliers believed the hype a little bit. Maybe they were buying into the talk that they were the favorites to win it all.
After all, on paper, this is a championship-caliber squad. The problem is that you have to show it on the hardwood. It's only one game, but the New York Knicks proved on Thursday that if you take your foot off the gas pedal, you could get burned.
The storyline was scheduled: An emotional, fun-filled day leading up to the return of LeBron James as a Cavalier, topped off with a crowd-pleasing victory. However, the Knicks studied a different script and sabotage the rest of the evening with a 95-90 win.
"Everybody was feeling too good in my opinion," Anderson Varejao told Northeast Ohio Media Group. "When you lose a game like that, a game that you were supposed to win where we're at home, that should make everybody work harder and think about what we need to do out there."
The Knicks looked atrocious in their 104-80 loss to the Chicago Bulls in New York last night, yet they mustered enough energy to put together the first upset of the season.
"It's a long season and teams are going to come with their best games against us," Tristan Thompson said. "For us, we have to come with our hard hats and be ready to play."
James didn't have his best performance in his return. He was five-of-15 from the field, finishing with 17 points in 43 minutes of play while committing a game-high eight turnovers.
In his own words, this was unacceptable.
"I hate turning the ball over," he said. "It's a pet peeve of mine and eight is definitely something that's not OK."
This team is filled with a bunch a new faces and time is still required to get everyone on the same page. They're still trying to come together.
"My turnovers, some of them were careless and some of them was chemistry," James said. "I was throwing passes where I was hoping where some of my teammates were and they were not there and that will come with each game, with each practice."
Head coach David Blatt says he thought his team exerted too much emotional energy to start the game because of the excitement and buildup of the day. The Cavaliers came out strong in the first quarter, but then sputtered the rest of the way.
"I think we spiked at a certain point," Blatt said. "We've been thinking and been excited about this game for a long time and certainly all day today. It's been building and building and we used that emotion in a positive way in the beginning. Like I said, I just thought we spiked and kind of dropped off the map to be honest with you."
There's no time for sulking, the Chicago Bulls are at home waiting for Cleveland to arrive for Friday's division rival game. Derrick Rose has looked good and the Bulls are expected to go neck-and-neck with Cleveland for Eastern Conference supremacy.
The Cavaliers are thankful they get another crack at it soon.
"That is what is great about this league. You can play as a bad as I did tonight and bounce back," James said. "..."It's one game and we have to learn from this. It's great to have a game like this, especially early on. It's good for us to learn from this experience."