What happens next will be far more important as far as determining the future of the season and, ultimately, the Cavaliers roster.
View full sizeWatching his team be thoroughly dominated by LeBron James and the Heat on Thursday, Byron Scott knows the current three-game, four-day road trip is important to his players. MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- All season long, whenever they've been asked about the departure or the return of LeBron James, most of the Cavaliers had a standard answer: We're moving on.
That has never been more true that it is in the wake of Thursday's devastating loss to the Miami Heat in James' return to The Q for the first time since the debacle of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Boston.
As bad as that was -- and NBA.com's Steve Aschburner may have described it best when he said the Cavs went from deer-in-the headlights to "complete Bambi" -- the Cavs are not going to let one day define their season. Even if it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, to borrow a line from author Judith Viorst.
The Cavs are well aware of the fans' outrage, especially over the perception that they were laughing and joking with James as he demolished them -- a perception the team has worked hard to correct in the 48 hours since then. According to several players and officials, what may have looked friendly was not. In addition, they point out, current NBA rules prevent the sort of mayhem that many fans were demanding.
Furthermore, common sense prevents the sort of roster overhaul that fans also are demanding after one particularly distasteful defeat. There's no doubt owner Dan Gilbert was incensed. He stalked from the arena declining interview attempts but later tweeted, "Words don't express my feelings so I won't even try. Know this: There's nothing U are feeling that I'm not. The best B-Ball player ever once said: 'My pain was my motivation.' And so it will be with us."
But he, too, realizes that at this point the Cavs are not dealing from a position of strength. Not a soul in the NBA doesn't know what happened on Thursday, which doesn't leave General Manager Chris Grant much bargaining room.
If it's possible -- and it may not be -- to take the emotion out of what happened Thursday, what happens next will be far more important as far as determining the future of the season and, ultimately, the roster. And not in that Nietzsche "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger" way either.
With a three-game trip against Minnesota, Detroit and Philadelphia, the Cavs can salvage the rest of their season.
"To win all three games would be a great trip, to win two out of three would be a good trip," coach Byron Scott said. What he didn't say was that to win none could spell disaster. But Antawn Jamison almost did.
"It's definitely a sense of urgency," Jamison said. "If we continue to play the way we're playing now, it's going to be a long season. The one good thing I will say is that looking at our record, we're still right there in the mix. We have to find a way start playing better basketball, and quickly.
"We have to put whether we're mad with our roles or anything, we have to put that behind us and just salvage what we have as far as the talents and what we're capable of doing as a team because if we don't do it now, it can really turn into something negative."
At the end of this trip, the Cavs will have played 21 games, a quarter of their season. They have had their moments, but overall they have not looked very good. They're not running Scott's Princeton offense effectively, the defense they're playing seems to come more from muscle memory than effort, and they're content to play about one good quarter a game.
But they have a chance to correct all that and start the recovery process.
"Do we feel we should win these games?" Scott said. "Yeah, we do. But we have to go out on the court and do it. We have to be a lot more aggressive, a lot more physical, a lot more patient on the offensive end. We have to trust each other a lot more than we have on both ends the last few games. If we do that, we feel we'll be victorious."
Two or three victories now will not erase the memory of Dec. 2. But if the Cavs can truly put it behind them and move on, it will not have to be the defining date of this franchise.
P.S. In case you're wondering, that best basketball player referred to in Gilbert's tweet is Michael Jordan.