CLEVELAND: The most daunting trip on the Cavaliers’ schedule, at least according to David Blatt, was the recently-completed West Coast trip that included a Christmas Day game and four games in five nights.
The runner-up was the six-game, 11-day trip on which the Cavs are about to embark. Put them both together and the Cavs will spend 18 of 23 days on the road and will fly more than 5,000 miles to their next six games.
Making matters more concerning is the Cavs’ less-than-stellar 8-8 road record and a trip that concludes with the dreaded Texas triangle of the Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets.
The Cavs and Miami Heat are the only division leaders not to have winning road records (the Heat are also .500 on the road).
“Good challenge for us,” Blatt said. “I think we’ve done reasonably well up to this point. This is a big challenge for us, this road trip, and hopefully we’re coming into it in a good way. Obviously [Monday] is the right way to enter into it.”
The Cavs enter the trip on a four-game winning streak after ripping the Toronto Raptors 122-100 to improve to 15-1 at home. The best news to come out of the Raptors win was the continuing emergence of Kyrie Irving, who set season highs with 25 points and eight assists and continues to look more and more like the three-time All-Star he was prior to knee surgery.
“I think we’re still ahead of the curve with Kyrie right now,” Blatt said. “I don’t think it’s fair to expect he’s going to do every night in the short term what he did [Monday], but it was nice to see him do it.”
Measuring up
The Cavs will need Irving at his best for this trip, particularly the Texas swing. There are only a few teams in the league by which the Cavs are realistically measured — and the Minnesota Timberwolves and Philadelphia 76ers aren’t on that list.
The teams the Cavs are reasonably measuring themselves against include teams like the Spurs, Rockets and Golden State Warriors, who will be waiting for them on Martin Luther King Day two nights after this trip ends. It begins Wednesday at Washington against a Wizards team that is the only one to beat the Cavs at Quicken Loans Arena this season.
“We’ll see what happens, starting in D.C.,” LeBron James said of the trip. “It’s a team who beat us really good, and we remember that, so we look forward to trying to get them on their home floor like they got us.”
Irving progressing
The Cavs are always away in mid-January to make room for Disney on Ice at Quicken Loans Arena. It’s usually when the league sends the Cavs on their long West Coast trip.
But the league shoehorned a West Coast trip into the end of December in order to pair the Cavs and Warriors together on Christmas Day, creating the need for a second trip that starts on the East Coast, shifts to the Midwest before returning East and concluding in Texas.
Irving will see at least two All-Star point guards on the trip including the Wizards’ John Wall and the Spurs’ Tony Parker.
But after his dazzling performance Monday, when he scored nine points and passed for three assists in the fourth quarter against the Raptors, James said there aren’t many guards in Irving’s class when he’s healthy.
“If he continues to play the way he’s been playing, but also continues to progress in his game over the years, he can do something that’s very special around this league,” James said. “I’m not going to put too much pressure on him, but I know in my head what he can become in this league and [Monday] he showed it.”
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.