The Cleveland Cavaliers suffered a lopsided loss, 103-80, against the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night at Quicken Loans Arena.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Cavaliers suffered a lopsided loss, 103-80, against the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night at Quicken Loans Arena.
The Cavs led by as many as 15 points before the Pistons stormed back and turned the first game at The Q since last Tuesday into a rout.
Kevin Love led the team in scoring with 20 points on 9-of-19 from the field. He also added 10 rebounds for his team-leading 16th double-double. LeBron James scored 17 points, but misfired on 14 of his 19 attempts.
Kyrie Irving missed his second straight game because of a bruised knee, but that still doesn't excuse a 23-point loss at home against a team that entered the game with just six wins on the season.
James summed it up succinctly after the loss, one that drops the Cavs' record to 18-12.
"Right now we're just not very good at every aspect of the game that we need to be to compete every night."
Here are five observations following a head-scratching loss against Detroit:
Blowing leads – Starting fast hasn't been a problem for the Cavs this season. Cleveland took an 11-point advantage into the second quarter before having it wiped away by the time the quarter ended.
"I thought we started extremely well, but we lost our energy and lost our competitiveness," David Blatt said. "That shouldn't happen."
Unfortunately it's become a trend. The loss against Detroit marks the fifth time the Cavs have led by at least double-digits at one time before losing.
"I think when you do build leads early on the way that we have, it shows that you're coming prepared and you're ready to play," Blatt said. "But when you lose those leads it also shows that we're not putting our foot down on our opponent and taking them out. That's a skill too."
The Pistons used excellent outside shooting, second chance opportunities and feisty defense to run the Cavs off their own home floor. The lead kept building and building, reaching 27 at one time, and Blatt took some blame for not being able to stop the bleeding.
"There's a lot of different things that you can do but obviously I didn't succeed in any one of them," he said.
No Comparison to Miami – I've been guilty of something this season: Comparing the Cavs to the 2010-2011 Miami Heat. It's time for me, and everyone else, to stop.
Yes, there are a few similarities. Both this year's Cavs and those Heat had LeBron James. Both teams put together a new Big Three in one off-season. Both were under the microscope, burdened by high expectations. Both had a shooting guard wearing the No. 3 on his jersey. But that's really where the similarities stop.
"Every experience is different. Every situation is different," James said. "We were a more veteran ballclub my first year in Miami even though we went through our struggles. Here we're a lot younger and less experienced."
Those are a few of the differences, but there are others.
Miami was built on a championship culture that already existed whereas the Cavs have only known losing the last four years. Miami had an identity, a defensive mindset, finishing sixth in defensive rating that year. The Cavs are still searching for what they are and how they can consistently win games. And Miami only had two losses all season of 20 points or more. One was to Denver. The other to San Antonio. The Cavs already have two of those such losses, and they have 52 more regular season games left.
James has been through a lot and seen a lot during his 12-year NBA career, but what happened on Sunday at Quicken Loans Arena is a first for him.
Turnover issue – Playing without Irving, the Cavs' offense struggled for all but one quarter. The biggest issue was taking care of the ball, and James was the biggest culprit, committing seven turnovers on his own.
"I think turnovers," James said about what contributed to the loss. "I was very careless tonight with the ball, a couple unforced turnovers. And those boys, they shot the heck out of the ball."
Turnovers have become a problem for James. He is averaging 3.7 (fifth-most in the league) and his total of 104 are almost double the next player on the Cavs roster. Love has committed 54, the second-most. Kyrie Irving is third with 52.
Yes, James initiates much of the offense and the ball is in his hands a lot, but he needs to do better in this area. And when he does make a mistake he needs to focus on getting back to defend instead of throwing his arms up, shaking his head and being slow to get back on defense. That only compounds the blunder.
"I thought we were careless with the ball," Blatt said. "If you look at our team and that stat it's very telling as to how we play. Every game is going to have a certain number of turnovers but there are games when the multi-turnover effect is more due to yourself than it is to your opponent."
Creating turnovers, getting out in transition and scoring before the opposing defense can get set are all part of the Cavs' normal formula. On Sunday, Detroit turned those 18 Cleveland miscues into 21 points, including a few backbreaking three-pointers.
Following the game Blatt admitted that his team didn't fight enough. They didn't fight through the injuries and didn't fight when things got difficult. Love saw the same thing, a disturbing trend.
"When that happens and we let somebody get an easy bucket we hang our heads and don't play with pace," Love said about the turnovers. "Don't score the ball at a high clip it affects us in every other part of the game. We need to play better in front of our home fans and it's unacceptable."
One-headed monster – Before the season started, Blatt referred to Thompson and Anderson Varejao as his two-headed monster. He also said he viewed both players as starters. Varejao's injury has given Thompson a bigger role and he continues to take advantage.
One game after scoring nine points and hauling in 13 rebounds, Thompson recorded his sixth double-double. He scored 18 points on 7-of-8 shooting and had a team-high 11 boards, including seven on the offensive end, in 37 minutes. Sunday was a stiff test with the undersized Thompson matched up against Detroit's talented frontcourt duo, Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe. He didn't back down and helped hold Monroe to a 4-of-18 shooting night.
In Thompson's three starts, he is averaging 13.3 points and 12.7 rebounds while shooting 58 percent.
His play was a bright spot in an otherwise putrid performance.
Three-point barrage – The most baffling part of the night was the Detroit shooting exhibition, and it wasn't just one guy. The Pistons went 17-of-31 from beyond the arc. That's 55 percent for a team that is making 33 percent this year, tied for 23rd in the league.
"A lot of them were contested and some of them were in transition on 1-on-4s," James said. "We just have to do a better job and have a little more sense of urgency. Don't discredit what they did to us. They beat us pretty good."
The 17 made threes are a new franchise record. Brandon Jennings, who finished as the leading scorer, with 25 points, made five. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Jodie Meeks each hit three. Kyle Singler, Jonas Jerebko and Caron Butler knocked down two each.
The Cavs better make the three-point line a focus because they head to Atlanta on Tuesday to play the Hawks, a team that hit 16-of-28 in the previous meeting between the two teams.