A final regular season game at home before the playoffs is rarely an opportunity to receive boos from your audience. However, this is what the Cavaliers achieved on Sunday. Against the Hornets riddled with absences, Cleveland missed the opportunity to climb the Eastern Conference hierarchy. The Cavs especially gave the impression of not having fought, particularly at the end of the game. Coach JB Bickerstaff thus deprived himself of all his starters in “money time”, letting Charlotte come back and win.
Emoni Bates – Pete Nance – Isaiah Mobley – Tristan Thompson – Damion Jones. This is the five with which Cleveland spent the last six minutes and forty seconds of the game. No major player, no leader… The Cavaliers offered a basketball mush. In control of the match 108-102, they conceded an 18-2 over the period, accumulating four lost balls for a basket. While at the same time, the Bucks were getting crushed in Orlando, the opportunity to grab third place was ideal.
Health before all
“ The plan going into this match was to give our starters minutes in the first three quarters. » explained JB Bickerstaff. “ Then Craig Porter Jr got injured (for a sprained ankle at the end of the first quarter, editor’s note), this changed this plan. We told the group before the match that we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to play. These players worked extremely hard all year and deserved these minutes. It was great to see Pete Nance score his first points in the NBA. That was the goal of this experience, to make sure that all the guys who worked so hard had the opportunity to play. »
Craig Porter Jr on the flank, the Cavs only had Max Strus and Isaac Okoro available on the back lines with the packages of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Caris LeVert, or Sam Merrill. Bickerstaff confirmed that he was kept informed of the progress of the Bucks and Knicks games.
“ But you know, it's complicated to take into account all this information in real time » he defends himself. The Cavaliers staff also assures that they wanted to avoid accumulating more injuries in view of the first round. “ Once we benched our guys in the third quarter, they were in the mindset that they weren't going to come back into the game. I didn't want to take any risks in bringing them back into the game when 'they were no longer warm, and that something would happen to them. »
Find the Magic rather than the Pacers, and the Celtics in the 2nd round…
In triple-double for the first time in his career and already anything but satisfied of his team's performance at the break, Max Strus added a layer after the match, visibly very disappointed with the turn of events. “ I don't know what to say… I wanted to win. I don't know what else to say. I'm a little mad that we didn't do it, but I'm happy that the young guys on the team had the opportunity to play a little more. I try to take a little positive out of it. »
The future will tell if this strategic choice will be as beneficial as that. By not doing everything to avoid fourth place, the Cavs will cross swords with Orlando in the first round of the playoffs. The Magic and their defensive toughness look far from the Knicks who took out Cleveland last year, while third place would have offered them a more open clash with the Pacers. And if the Cavaliers overcome the Orlando obstacle, they could find the scarecrow Boston in the second round…
