CLEVELAND: After falling behind by 18 and 14 points in each of their past two home games, maybe now isn’t such a bad time for the Cavaliers to get out of town for a while.
They still have plenty of work to do, and with the first playoff game a little more than a month away, LeBron James made it clear following Monday’s embarrassing loss to the Memphis Grizzlies they’re not ready for prime time.
“I can sit up here and say that we’re a team that’s ready to start the playoffs tomorrow, but we’re not,” James said. “We’re still learning, we still have things that happen on the court that just shouldn’t happen.”
Such as falling behind at home to the Boston Celtics by 18 points in the first quarter Saturday, then committing a season-high 25 turnovers in a loss to a Grizzlies team Monday that was without their three stars and dressed just eight healthy players.
The Cavs remain two games ahead of the Toronto Raptors in the loss column, but now head out west beginning with Wednesday’s game at the Sacramento Kings. The Cavs have been embarrassed on their last two trips to Sacramento, but James was injured and didn’t play in the game last season. He was playing for the Heat the year before.
“It’s gonna be good,” James said of the trip. “Gonna be a good test for us.”
The Cavs will also face the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers on this trip, perhaps at a good time. After all, it was victories over those two teams in Los Angeles last season that triggered a season turnaround and propelled them to the Finals. Most everyone affiliated with this team has been waiting on them to get hot and rip off a similar type of hot streak, but every few wins and signs of optimism have been interrupted with unnecessary losses.
If the Cavs are going to rip off a sustained winning streak of substance, they’ll have to fix the defense once and for all. Center Timofey Mozgov was ill Monday and missed the morning shootaround. The Cavs benched him in the second half and went small using three-guard sets, but defensively those lineups have been inconsistent compared to last season’s defensive turnaround.
As the defensive coordinator, Tyronn Lue overhauled the defense in the middle of last season after the Cavs acquired Mozgov, changing the way they defend pick-and-rolls because of the added presence of a rim protector. They are changing the defense yet again this season, going to a smaller, sleeker lineup that switches almost everything on pick-and-rolls. The results have been inconsistent.
They held the Wizards under 40 percent shooting in a convincing home win Friday, then allowed the Grizzlies 54 points in the paint on a night their All-Star big men were injured.
“I thought our guards allowed too much penetration,” Lue said after the game, reiterating an ongoing problem with this defense. “We couldn’t control the ball one-on-one off the dribble. They were in the paint all night.”
Switching everything defensively is supposed to contain the dribble, at least in theory. The reason the Cavs do it is to force teams to play isolation basketball. That wasn’t a problem for the Grizzlies on Monday.
“We didn’t pay attention to detail,” James said. “And they burned us.”
The Cavs have 20 games left. There are plenty of details still to be sorted out.
McRae extended
The Cavs will extend Jordan McRae’s contract through the rest of the season and will hold a non-guaranteed team option for next season.
McRae’s original 10-day contract expired on Tuesday. The official announcement is expected on Wednesday.
Langdon leaving
Trajan Langdon is leaving the Cavaliers to take an assistant general manager position with the Brooklyn Nets.
Langdon was a special assistant to Cavs General Manager David Griffin.
Jason Lloyd can be reached at jlloyd@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Cavs blog at www.ohio.com/cavs. Follow him on Twitter www.twitter.com/JasonLloydABJ.