Written by Demetri Inembolidis

---

 

As has been a common theme in these game recaps this season, the Cavs are not a very good team.  They are going to lose more games than they win. The team was flirting with a playoff berth for much of the year and that had some media members and fans excited even though it was clearly fool’s gold.  

As Tom Reed of the Cleveland Plain Dealer pointed out on his Twitter feed on Tuesday night, the Cavs have lose their last two home games by a combined 72 points.  This is not something that should ever happen to any playoff team under any circumstances.  Even if the Dallas Mavericks lost Dirk Nowitzki to injury for two games, they have enough depth to not lose two games by an average of 36 points.

The Cavs have insurmountable problems.  The only hope of righting the ship is for the season to end as quickly as possible.  To think that playoffs were ever in the collective psyche of Cleveland fans makes me wish that I could make an appointment with Lacuna, Inc.  It is regrettable and something that should be forgotten.  

The team that the Cavs should be modeling themselves after is the New Orleans Hornets.  They have not been winning many games, but they are playing hard and staying in games that they do not have any business being in.  It is one thing to be outmatched and to lose because the other team has a more-talented roster and it is another to not show any effort whatsoever.  A lot of the players on the Cavs roster are fringe NBA talent and they cannot even show up and play hard on a nightly basis despite the fact that their futures may depend on it.

The Cavs continued their downward spiral into futility against the Spurs in front of 14,759 fans.  The star of the night was former Cavaliers guard Danny Green.  He put on a show and poured-in 19 points on only 11 shots.  Green played like a man on a mission and made it abundantly clear that the Cavs made a mistake by waiving him in October of 2010.  It is a very small sample size, but Danny Green did his best to show the Cavs that they should have retained his services as opposed to Manny Harris.

To put it into perspective, the Spurs could have not scored a single point in the 4th quarter and the game would have gone into overtime.  The Cavs gave up 59.3% shooting to the Spurs.  In fact, the Spurs shot better from beyond the three-point arc (47.8%) than the Cavs did overall (41.5%).

Kyrie Irving made his return after missing a game after spraining his right shoulder against the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night.  Irving recorded decent numbers, but did so without high efficiency.  He scored 13 points on 15 shots and was torched on defense in his 29 minutes of playing time.  Not a single Cavalier had a positive +/-, but Irving’s was exceptionally bad.  With Irving on the floor, the Cavs were outscored by 23 points.  Very little should be made of a bad performance against an elite team while injured, but it also should not be ignored.

The good news is that the season will be over soon.  Next season will have plenty of struggles, but hopefully it will be with some a little more of a youth movement after the draft.  The bad news is that there are still fifteen games left with little to play for other than next year.

The Good: With the Cavs losing and the Toronto Raptors winning, Cleveland is now slated to pick 4th overall.  Drafting at that spot is not guaranteed, but the Cavs can use all of the help that they can get and drafting high is the best antidote.

The Bad: There is an infinite amount of material to choose from, but most impressive is that the Cavs did not score a single fast-break basket against the Spurs.  San Antonio is not a young team and the Cavs should have tried to get out on transition.  The Spurs took that away from the Cavs.

The Ugly: The Spurs had six different players score in double figures and neither of them were Tim Duncan or Manu Ginobili.  Cleveland was a mess offensively and defensively.