The Cleveland Cavaliers are slipping a little. Not a lot, I mean we won’t be talking about this dip in form come Playoff time. But we live in the now and they’re currently tied for first in the Eastern Conference with the Miami Heat who beat them last night.
Sure LeBron didn’t play but at the end of the day the Cavs took an L once again in Miami. And they’re on a losing streak. The Cavs players are noticing the dip in form.
“I think we just got a little too lax thinking because we’re the Cavs and we got ‘Bron and Kevin and Kyrie and Shump, the players that we have, [the opposition is] just going to come out here and not play as hard as they would against any other team,” J.R. Smith said. “But we got to realize that people are going to play harder than that. This is a big game for them every time we step on the court. They’re just trying to get a marquee win. And when we realize that and take that into consideration, we’ll be better.”
“We just got to get back to the basics. We got to watch film, we got to get back in the gym together as a team and just find an identity,” Thompson said. “I think we’re going to get every team’s best game, and we got to understand that, and we can’t be surprised when a team comes out and knocks down a couple shots or plays or does things that statistically they’re not great at. Because every night, a team is going to get pumped up. I remember being in that same position when I was on a team that wasn’t playing for much. When you play against the top dogs, that shot you usually don’t make for the rest of the season, you make it that game. So we got to be prepared for that.“
I knew the Cavs would get too “lax” as Smith says. I knew they would try to coast to the Playoffs. It’s clear that they can’t do that this year. To be fair LeBron has been preaching this for weeks. The Eastern Conference is extremely tight this year and personally I am loving it. It’s like the West in the past couple of years. Cavs better fix up before this rut gets out of hand.
