Cavs need to prove they aren’t just last year’s team

The Cavs look alarmingly like the last few playoff failure teams.

Injuries, poor coaching decisions, and bad performances when it mattered most. Does it sound like the 2023-24 Cleveland Cavaliers that scraped by the inferior Orlando Magic? Maybe the 2022-2023 squad that floundered against the New York Knicks?

It could be either of them, but now it may also be the 2024-25 team.

The Cavs’ collapse in the final minute of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals reeked of the final two J.B. Bickerstaff seasons. Brain cramps and mistakes, like not being able to inbound the basketball or box out free throws, ended up being the dagger straight to the aorta.

Injuries have derailed an otherwise relatively unscathed regular season. And when it mattered most, the key players didn’t play well.

Ty Jerome had a “burn the tape” game, shooting 1-14 from the floor and appeared way short on his shot attempts. His patented slow floater was entirely ineffective. Dean Wade and Isaac Okoro combined for eight points as replacements for Evan Mobley and De’Andre Hunter. Donovan Mitchell, Jarrett Allen, and Max Strus carried their own in the starting lineup, but combined for 11 turnovers and made some late-game mistakes.

Mitchell’s sparkling 48 points went to waste in an eerily similar feeling to last year when he was tasked with carrying the offensive load.

But the last sixty seconds were a culminating moment that felt all too familiar. Strus, for as well as he played (a playoff career-high 23 points), made a terrible inbounds pass with 25 seconds left that was stolen by Indiana. Mitchell got called for a charge on one play, and didn’t box out on another — resulting in a dunk. Jerome’s awful shooting night looms extremely large, as the Cavs already had a very slim margin for error with so many key players out. Had he made just one more basket, the situation would have looked a lot different.

NBA Coach of the Year, Kenny Atkinson, gets some blame too. He called a critical and unnecessary timeout with under 30 seconds remaining, just a split second before the ball was eventually inbounded to Allen. That timeout could have been used on the ensuing inbound (which was a turnover), to challenge a foul call on Jerome, or advance the ball after Tyrese Halliburton drilled a cold-blooded three that went on to win the game. Instead, the Cavs did everything wrong and had to take a 0.01% chance last-second heave.

Yet, despite all of this, they still put themselves in a position to win. Twice.

This Cavs team is certainly good enough to win the next two games in Indiana. But the biggest question, regardless of whether their injured stars can play, will be how they respond to adversity. Last year’s team wilted under pressure in big moments. The offensive burden was shouldered by Mitchell, who is dealing with a calf injury once again. This year’s team is better-equipped to lighten the load of their best player, but the injury bug has hit at the worst time, and the late-game collapses are evidently still there.

The mental weight is getting heavier, and the Cavs need to push back.

Without Garland, Jerome has to be playing at his best. Facilitating the offense, getting to his spots, and playing the passing lanes is the bare minimum for the Sixth-Man of the Year candidate. Poor shooting nights happen, but Jerome’s inability to stop shooting and resort to a facilitator role hurt the Cavs. Shooting 7% in a near must-win game is inexcusable, but some pick and rolls with Allen — a two-man game that works with Garland — should have been implemented to make things a little easier.

Replacing Mobley, the NBA’s Defensive Player of The Year, is no small feat. Dean Wade did his best, trying hard on the defensive end and snagging 10 rebounds while his assignment, Pascal Siakam, only had 12 points. But Wade only attempted four shots last night, hitting one of them. His floor-stretching ability could have been utilized more.

Despite missing their All-Star point guard, Defensive Player of the Year, and their best bench player, the Cavs are a bad shooting night and one minute of horrific closing play away from being up 2-0. That should give a glimmer of optimism heading into an even more must-win game Friday night.

The Cavs and their fanbase were shunned by national media coverage for a while, but became unavoidably good in the regular season. However, there have been wisps of skepticism from those media outlets about Cleveland’s ability to maintain its play in the postseason setting. Right now, the Cavs are proving those people right.

A 64-win regular season from the Cavs showed they can dominate anyone at any given moment. It’s time to show that in Game 3, or risk an early — and greatly disappointing — exit from the playoffs.