Cleveland Cavaliers Lose to Dallas Mavericks in Concerning Fashion

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On today's show, the Dallas Mavericks coming to Cleveland and hand the calves, what might

be their most disappointing loss of the season?

We'll talk about everything that went wrong and the one thing that did go right on Sunday,

right here, locked on calves.

You are locked on calves, your daily Cleveland Cavaliers podcast, part of the Locked On

Podcast Network, your team, every day.

Hello again, everybody.

My name is Danny Cunningham and I cover the Cleveland Cavaliers over at my sub-stech, the

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We will be talking about one of the worst losses of the entire season and one that I think

is concerning for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

We also talk about Max Truce's season debut because that was the only positive on Sunday

and then we will wrap up the show by discussing how can the Cavaliers respond to what happened

on Sunday?

Was they 130 to 120 lost to the Dallas Mavericks in Cleveland?

If you listen to this show over the weekend and you heard me talk about the Cavs beating

the Dallas Mavericks on Friday by 33 points which was tied for the largest margin of victory

the Cavs have had in a single game this season.

One of the things I said at the end of that episode was now it's on the Cavs to build

upon that, to take that win and maybe not win by 33 points again on Sunday because that's

a difficult thing to be fair.

That's a difficult thing to do back to back games against the same opponent, but Sunday

was the game the Cavs could have controlled.

The Cavs should have controlled.

They had a lot of advantages, yes, they were without Jared Allen, they were without Jalen

Tyson.

Sam Merrill didn't play in this game, Craig Porter Jr. was out like they were down a significant

amount of players, but they did get Max Truce back and like there were some things working

against them, but there were in this game far more things that were working in their

favor.

They were facing a Dallas Mavericks team that is now 23 and 45.

That's bad.

The Dallas Mavericks were playing their third game in four days with that third game being

an afternoon tip.

The team in that spot and Dallas the spot very rarely wins that type of game.

It's like a 33% win percentage when the team is in that spot and the Cavs were on the

wrong side of that and after the game, Kenya Kingston called this an inexcusable defensive

performance and I could not agree more with what he said.

I think that this is an inexcusable loss.

I don't know if I'm going to say it's the worst loss the Cavs have had this year.

I think the loss of the Golden State Warriors could be up there earlier in the year when

the Warriors had nobody in the Cavs still found a way to lose, but like that one, I think

is more explainable.

This might be the least explainable loss the Cavs have this year because to watch them

and I don't think it was fair to expect them to go in and again, win this game by 33 points.

The Dallas Mavericks have some pride.

So I don't think it was fair to expect the Cavs to just completely replicate what happened

on Friday, but I think it was fair to expect them to put forth a much better effort than

they did.

I think that's the thing that's most disappointing about this is that if the Cavs would have

come out Sunday and just have an off day shooting where sometimes because this is ultimately

a make or miss league, if they would have come out and just miss shots, I think it would

have been easier to just watch this game so you know what, they just, they miss shots

on Sunday and they didn't do this, this and this and that's why they lost.

It's not what happened.

The Cavs didn't lose this game because they miss shots.

They shot the ball well.

They were 51% from the floor.

They were just under 40% from three.

They need to shoot their free throws better, but that wasn't the difference in this game.

They didn't lose this game because they didn't shoot the ball well enough like last Sunday

or whatever it was, maybe two Sundays ago, it's less and no less Sunday against Boston.

The Cavs lost that game for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons was because they shot

the ball really, really poorly in the first half.

They were two of 22 on three in the first half against Boston a week ago.

That's not what happened in this game.

The Cavs didn't lose this game at all because of, well, maybe not at all because of their

offense.

Turnovers were an issue, but they shot the ball well enough to win this game.

They lost this game because the effort was not at a high enough level on the defensive

end.

Their point of attack defense was atrocious.

The Dallas Mavericks, who are, again, not a good basketball team, they're not playing

to win basketball games right now.

And yes, Cooper Flag had a very good game, Naji Marshall had a very good game, PJ Washington

who did not play on Friday for the Mavericks had a very good game.

Like give credit words to the Dallas Mavericks were a better basketball team than the Cavs,

but that shouldn't matter a better basketball team on Sunday.

The Cavs are obviously a better team than the Dallas, but like that shouldn't matter.

The Cavs should have on Sunday been able to put forth a strong enough effort on both

ends of the floor offensively and defensively because I actually do think that as I think

about the way they played this game offensively, I think that they, and I don't have the advanced

numbers, the tracking numbers, the shot quality numbers, like I'm doing this based on the

eye test.

To me, in watching this game, it felt like the Cavs maybe shot a little bit above their

heads.

Like I did not love the offensive process in this game for the Cavs.

I think that they could have done a much better job and I think at times they hit some tough

shots like Donovan Mitchell, who was 4 of 11 from 3.

Two of those threes were at the end of the shot clock.

One was a no dip one.

It's like, okay, that's an awesome shot, but it's not a great shot.

Like that's not the shot you are drawing up at the end of a possession.

And then there was another one at the end of the possession, it's like a 9-1-1-3 that's

very tightly contested and he hits because he's an awesome shooter, not that Donovan had

a good day today because he did not.

But I thought the Cavs actually hit some really tough shots.

And I think that is kind of masked how bad this game actually was from them because their

defensive performance was atrocious.

And Kenny Atkins and after the game compared it to the game against the Orlando Magic

on Wednesday.

And against the magic, the Cavs did look a step slow defensively.

And I talked about that on Thursday's edition of the show.

And I think part of that was for the Cavs in that game, they were on their third game

in four nights.

Like they looked like they had heavy legs, they looked like they were tired and they're

not going to say this.

And I don't, I'm not saying that this is the case, I don't know if it is or not.

Maybe all the travel on them is wearing them.

Like that is something that could be the case.

I just think that for them to be as bad defensively on the ball as they were on Sunday.

There's no excuse for it.

In the first quarter, they were terrible on the board.

So now they did clean that up the rest of the way and they rebounded better in quarters

two through four.

But just like all of the little things, the Cavs did poorly.

And that's what I think is so disheartening about this is that if you're the Cavs, this

is the time of season where you should start to fine tune things.

You should start to be able to really lock down the little things and do all those things

well because this is for them.

This is playoff preparation.

I know they're not going to see the Dallas Mavericks again until next season.

I get that.

They're not going to see the Milwaukee box, do they play on Tuesday until next season.

They're not going to see the Chicago like these are not games where you look at and say,

yes, we have to be very into the game plan.

We have to do all the things.

But you have to do the little things well.

You have to play hard.

You can't take your foot off the gas at this time of year, especially when you're a team

like the Cavs who you've not played very many basketball games together because not only

is this roster pretty new when you think about some of the new acquisitions and James Harden

had a really rough day on Sunday, Dennis Schroeder, I thought was the best of the three

newcomers.

I thought can't always had maybe his worst game as a member of the Cavs on both ends of

the floor in this one, but you have a new basketball team.

So it's not because we see some teams where March doesn't go well, but it's just not

concerning because sometimes March basketball can be fake.

But this is a concerning loss, I think, for the Cavs because they should be ramping up.

They should be putting their foot on the gas and you don't want to over exert yourself

in March, but you have to exert yourselves in March when you're a new basketball team

in the way the Cavs are and Sunday was a complete opposite of that.

This was, I think, one of the more disappointing losses that they've had throughout the course

of the entire season, they deserve all the criticism that they're getting from this

loss because this Dallas Mavericks team, they had no business beating the Cavs and the

Cavs helped them win this game, 16 turnovers, I created, and not all turnovers are created

equally to be fair here, but 12 of their turnovers were live ball turnovers.

Dallas scored 25 points off of Cleveland 16 turnovers, the Cavs forced 13 turnovers,

they scored nine points off them.

That right there is the difference in this basketball game is that the Dallas Mavericks

were able to get out and run off of Cavs turnovers and even when the Cavs did get them

into half court offensive sets, the Cavs point of attack defense was atrocious.

They gave up 40 points in the third quarter to a team that they held to 105 points on Friday

night.

Just there is no excuse for what they did defensively in this game on Sunday afternoon and it's

something that needs to be cleaned up, like I don't ever want to be the guy that's

like yes, we need to press the panic button at every chance we get.

And if you listen to the show, I think you know, I have given this team a very fair amount

of grace over the course of this season.

There's always time to figure these things out and they still do have time to be fair.

They're running out of it, but they still have some time to figure things out, but this

to me was a concerning loss.

The Cavs at this point with who they are and again, I understand guys are out.

Guys were out for Dallas too.

They are right.

It's not the full version of the Dallas Mavericks that Cavs are seeing.

Cavs missed Jared Allen a lot, but they still need to find ways to beat bad teams without

them.

They found a way to beat this team without Jared Allen on Friday.

You can't tell me because the two guys that didn't play for the Cavs on Sunday that

played on Friday were Jalen Tyson and Craig Porter Jr., and it's not like either of those

two guys had super big roles against Dallas on Friday.

The Cavs got Max Shrews back who I'm going to talk about in a second was awesome.

He was the best player the Cavs had in this game, which nobody fairly could have expected.

He was amazing in this game.

That was the one positive to take away from this from the Cavs point of view, but this

is a game where Evan Mobley was okay, like he had 18 and 11, he had four block shots,

he turned the basketball over four times, he's still struggling from the free throw line.

Donovan Mitchell scored 26 points and he had 24 shots to do so.

I did not think this was a good Donovan Mitchell performance.

He had four turnovers too.

I think this may have been James Harden's worst game as a member of the Cavs.

He had 13 points on four of 12 shooting, was one of five from deep, had six turnovers,

like the Cavs need better from all three of their star players.

James Harden wasn't good enough.

Donovan Mitchell wasn't good enough.

Evan Mobley wasn't good enough.

None of them were.

Really, the only guy that I look at that and say that guy was good enough is Max Shrews.

Cannellus, I thought that he was bad on both ends of the floor.

I thought Dean Wade was good offensively, one of the better Dean Wade offensive performances

we've seen, but I don't know the last time that we've seen Dean Wade be this ineffective

defensively.

I thought that he was a bad defensive player on Sunday against Dallas.

Those are things that shouldn't be happening at this time of year.

If it happens in November, it's one thing in December, even in parts of January, but

like, this was for a team that wants to be taken seriously as a championship contender.

This was a very, very unserious effort from the Cavs on Sunday afternoon.

Maybe part of it is this team just can't play on Sunday afternoons.

They're one in five in games on Sunday afternoons, and the one when they have was that game

against the Brooklyn.

That's a couple of weeks ago, and even that one was far too close for comfort against

the team that, again, is not trying to win basketball games.

I don't have an explanation for it.

They've been a bad afternoon team.

They've won a couple of afternoon games, but they've not done well on Sundays.

The afternoon games they've won have been on Saturdays.

I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's just a quirk, and maybe this ultimately is nothing to be concerned about, but I watched

this game on Sunday, and it was hard for me to sit there and just think, you know what,

this is a championship caliber effort.

I don't know the championship teams do this.

And that's why to me, this was as concerning as it gets for the caps.

Now, I did say there was one positive, because Max Drew's after missing the first 67 games

of the season, he finally played for the cabs, and it was worth the wait.

We'll talk about the game he had, what he had to say afterwards, and so much more right

here on this additional lockdown caps.

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you might be listening to this podcast, the one positive for the calves on Sunday afternoon

was Max Struse.

So Max Frack had a Jones fracture in his foot that occurred all the way back in August.

He had surgery on August 26th.

I believe the date was and he had missed every single game the calves had played up until

now.

It's a very difficult injury to deal with.

If you've listened to this podcast, I have talked about my personal experience with the

Jones fracture before.

It's not a lot of fun to come back from.

And Max really went through a lot to get back to this point.

So when he checked into the game with four minutes and 53 seconds remaining in the first

quarter, and he appropriately, I thought, got a standing ovation from the fans.

I think it's been a difficult journey back.

I think it has been something that has been really difficult physically and emotionally

and even mentally for Max because when you are injured in that way and you are the competitor

that Max Struse is, I think it's a really challenging thing to deal with.

And I think that this was a tough time for Max.

So for him to get back on the floor, I think is it a big accomplishment coming back

from this specific injury, which is a real pain to try and get healed correctly and properly

and to not have any setbacks.

And then Max was awesome in a way that I didn't expect.

And you don't know really whatever to fairly expect from a guy when they're coming back

from injury, right?

Like it is something that he could have gone out there and missed every shot and looked

at a rhythm and been a detriment to success on the calves.

And I don't think anyone would have blamed it would have been like, yeah, he's not played

in a basketball game since May.

A lot of us to knock off.

Instead, Max gets on the floor, Max down his first three and then a possessionally.

And that was that came after James Harden was trapped by the Mavericks, which they did quite

a bit during this game.

They put two on the ball there and tried to force it out of his hands.

He hits a three, he's moving left to right, hits a three, that's a tough shot, just bob

on the nut, pure crowd goes nuts.

Next possession hits another three from the same spot on the floor, forces a Dallas Mavericks

timeout.

And the buildings on fire at that point, like it was, it was an awesome moment.

One of the cooler moments I thought inside Rocket Arena so far this year, hits another

three, a couple of possessions later, he had nine points on three of three from beyond

the arc in the second quarter alone.

So Max finished this game with 24 points on seven of nine shooting with six of seven

from beyond the arc, four or four from the free throw line had eight rebounds as well.

He was awesome.

He was the best player the calves had, and even the two missed shots that he had, one

of them I thought should have been goal tending.

The other one was a three pointer at the end of the shot clock that got blocked.

But otherwise, he was outstanding.

It wasn't perfect defensively, but it was better than most other guys in the calves, like

he put forth the requisite effort on that under the floor in a way that I don't think all

of his teammates did.

And this was, I just think better than anybody could have expected.

He was absolutely outstanding in this game.

And I don't know that this is going to be who Max is going to be every night.

There are probably going to be some abs and flows here.

It's going to be a process for him to get back to his full minutes load.

Kenny Atkinson said the minutes restriction was low 20s.

He ended up playing 22 minutes and 52 seconds.

So he stuck through to that word.

I don't know how much longer he's going to be on a minute restriction.

I would imagine this is not going to be the quickest of ramp ups as we get towards the

end of the season.

The hope has to be that by the time the playoffs is arrives, if the calves need macstros

to play 35 minutes, macstros can play 35 minutes, that has to be the goal here.

But for him to come back and play at the level that he did, as soon as he did, I think

is the only encouraging thing to come out of this game because Max has shown what he's

capable of.

Again, it's probably not going to be something that happens like if he goes out there and

plays on Tuesday and Milwaukee, and has this exact game again, I would be surprised.

Like I think that this is going to be a process.

He's probably going to be sore on Monday after playing 23 minutes of NBA basketball after

not playing since May.

This is going to be a process.

There's going to be abs.

There's going to be flows.

There's going to be peace and valleys like whatever analogy you want to use there, that's

what this process is going to be like.

But I think it's fair to say that no matter what you expected of Max, he surpassed those

expectations in his debut.

And I do think, too, he was very reflective after the fact when he met with the media.

He talked with us for around seven minutes in the locker room after the game.

He was very reflective and he says he wants to be a more positive person because Max is

a very, very competitive guy.

And I think anyone that has talked to him or if you've watched his post game interviews

on Fandall Sports Network or even if you go back and watch or listen to the episode

of Lockdown Caves that Max Truce was a guest on prior to last season, like I think you

sense the competitiveness.

Like he is just incredibly fueled by the desire to win.

It is ingrained in the fabric of who he is as a person.

And you could tell that he was a little bothered that the Caves played as poorly as they did

in this game.

And he called it a bad loss and down off the Mitchell called it a bad loss and like they

recognized that this was that.

But he also, he's trying to turn over newly if he said and be grateful for things and be

a little bit more positive.

So one of the things he said, everybody telling me I need to be more positive.

So still trying to be myself, but understand and be grateful for a lot of things and be

grateful.

Be happy.

It was hard not to play not to be out there with my teammates for that long.

I didn't expect it to be that long, but it was.

It is what it is and I'm back and I can be happy for that.

So I did ask Max, Max, what these last six months were like for him.

Because I think when you go through something like this, an injury like this that takes

away the game from you, I think it can force you to just as a human being sort of reflect

on things.

And I asked Max about that process and he said, definitely not fun.

I don't know how to explain it.

It was a lot of ups and downs.

I tried to stay positive through it all, tried to keep a good attitude through it all.

Like I said earlier, I didn't want it to be this long.

It wasn't meant to be this long, but I can't control the way my body heals.

Unfortunately, if I did, I would have been playing back before Christmas.

But like I said, we're here.

It was a long road.

It was a long time through recovery.

And I just think everybody who spent time and did their job to help me get to this point.

And just like this was something that nobody expected to take in so much.

I think Christmas as Max said, probably was a little bit ambitious.

This is a difficult injury as I've talked about the entire time.

It's a difficult injury to heal.

You just don't get a lot of blood flow to that part of the foot.

It's an injury that easily can be something that re-breaks for lack of a better way to

say it.

I mean, like this is going to be a process for him.

But for Max to be able to come out and play the way that he did, be somebody that impact,

I know they lost by 10, but he impacted winning.

And the plus minus stat is not always indicative.

But there were nine guys that played in this game for the calves.

Eight of them were negatives in this game.

Max Trus wasn't.

And it felt like that when you were watching this game live on Sunday afternoon.

Now this was, as I said, a concerning loss for the calves, a bad loss for the calves.

One of their worst losses of the season.

How they respond to it is going to tell us everything we need to know about this team.

We'll talk about that next right here, unlock them calves.

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This is an awful loss for the Cavs and there's no way around that.

I don't know how many losses this season are worse than this one.

I'm not sure if there are any losses this season given the circumstances that are worse

than this one.

But this is a loss that while a bad one doesn't end this season for the Cavaliers.

They were not eliminated from winning the championship on Sunday afternoon.

They were not eliminated from the playoffs.

They were not eliminated from having home court advantage in the first round.

None of those things were eliminated because the Cavs lost to the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday

off.

That doesn't mean the concerns aren't valid because they unquestionably are valid.

But what matters ultimately is not that this loss happens.

What matters is how does this group respond to this loss?

And one of the things that Donovan Mitchell said, when I asked him after this game, I asked

him how concerning of a loss is this considering where you are at in the calendar.

And he said, I think the biggest thing is it's just like I said, the little details.

I'm not going to use the word concern.

I think it's just something that we got 12.

They actually have 14.

He misspoke, but he said 12 games to fix it and go from there.

Like I said, we haven't had this really any adversity with the current group, with the

current makeup of the group.

So how are we going to handle it, right?

Like two tough losses defensively.

This one and the one against Orlando on Wednesday is the other one he's speaking about,

which really hurt us.

We go back and watch the film.

We got an important trip coming up and then we got a few home games and then we come

back, right?

Like that's going to be the biggest thing.

It's not always going to be just would we love to go out there and I've said this before,

but we'd love to go out there and win through these games.

You learn more through these losses and just use that to improve and get better.

If the Cavs get better because of this, if this serves as the final wake up call that

they need before the postseason, before they need to be a serious basketball team with

true championship aspirations and play like one because that is not what they played like

on Sunday.

As I said, they deserve all the criticism that they are getting for the way they lost

this game to the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday afternoon at home.

If they use this and learn from it and take it and respond the right way, then I think

ultimately this loss is in a big deal.

But if this loss, which is a loss the Cavs have had before, again, to Donovan's point,

maybe they haven't had this type of loss against a bad team where they had a rest advantage

and they just didn't have an interest in playing defense with this current group of guys,

right?

Like the last time they had a loss like this, James Harden was a clipper.

They've not had games like this one specifically with this group.

And that's a fair point to make on Donovan.

And that's why this is important because how is this group going to respond to this?

They, for the most part, have responded positively to adversity this year.

But now they have an opportunity.

They go on the road for three more games.

They take on the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday, who the injury report is not out obviously.

It is 9.30 as I record this on Sunday night, so we don't have an injury report for that

game.

But Yannis Entity Combo got hurt on Sunday as the Bucks were playing the Pacers and he

looks like somebody, the way that he was walking back to the locker room, very much looks

like somebody who's not going to be playing a basketball game against the Cavs on Tuesday

night.

Then they played the Chicago Bulls.

The Bulls will be on the second night of the back-to-back and while the Bulls did have

a couple of wins while they're out west, they're not a very good basketball team.

And then they played the New Orleans Pelicans next Saturday, who the Pelicans had played

better recently, but they're a bad basketball team.

The Cavs need to win those games.

There's no way around it.

I said after the game against the Magic, the Cavs needed to win the next five while they

failed to do that because they lost to Dallas on Sunday afternoon.

But I look at the next six games the Cavs have.

The three that I just explained and then you have the Orlando Magic and Cleveland.

That game for the Magic will be the second night of the back-to-back for them.

Then you have second night of the back-to-back for the Cavs at home against the Miami Heat.

And then another game at home against the Miami Heat.

Those are games that I look at and are they as important as the game against the Celtics?

No, they're not.

But they're important games the rest of the way that we need to see this team put it together

for an extended stretch.

They need to get healthier.

They need to get Jared Allen back.

They need to get Sam Merrill back.

I don't know how much longer those guys are going to be out.

Kenny Atkinson said, still characterizes Jared Allen as a day-to-day thing.

It's a pretty severe case of knee tendinitis and they hope that once he's back on the floor

that this is not a thing that's going to bounce him from the line up again.

That it's a once he's out and once he's back in, he's back in.

They're going to be conservative with Sam's hamstring because with injuries, they've got

the postseason in mind as they should.

But I do think it's important before the playoffs get here, we have to see this team start

to click on all cylinders for a bit of a period of time.

You've got 14 games left to do it and I think it needs to start on Tuesday and Milwaukee

against the box.

That's going to do it for me on this edition of Lockdown Caves and if you've been listening

to the show on YouTube, please do me a favor, hit the thumbs up button in the notification

bell.

If you've not done that already and make sure you're subscribed anywhere where you might

be getting your podcasts and I will be back tomorrow right here on Lockdown Caves talking

more about the Cleveland Cavaliers.

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