When I woke up today to see the full slate of games last night, I genuinely thought I needed to take a trip to the opticians to get my eyes checked.
The Brooklyn Nets, beating the Cleveland Cavaliers?! No I’m not that lucky. But after several minutes of looking on several sites for confirmation, it was true! The Cavs lost to the Nets!
I just had to laugh. Partly because I’m glad that my eyes weren’t deceiving me, but the fact that the Cavs took an L against Brooklyn just strengthens my hopes on my bold prediction of Cleveland not making the NBA Finals.
LeBron James has been in the middle of it all. Cavs are flailing, Tyronn Lue taking blame for defensive slippage, we’re talking about who LeBron is not following on Twitter for crying out loud. There’s too much noise for this team to be coherent and consistent.
Even though he’s been causing some of the ruckus, LeBron says he needs to do more.
“I just need to do more,” James said Thursday after a 104-95 loss to the Brooklyn Nets. “Just need to do more, and I have been able to do that, except for tonight, for the most part.”
Asked to elaborate on what “more” meant, James replied: “It’s everything.”
“I just told him we can’t have that, being down like we were and him being the leader,” Lue told Cleveland.com. “Just me being a competitor, I didn’t like it. We had a long talk about it. It was good. He understood, he apologized, and he’s been great.”
Lue declined to offer further detail Thursday before the Nets game.
“We talked about it,” Lue said. “I’d rather not say. We talked about it, and now my focus is on winning games going forward. LeBron is the leader of this team. We had a great talk, and that’s it.“
LeBron is the problem off-court. That Twitter thing was so unnecessary, the national media had a wail of a time talking about it. On-court he is doing it all stats-wise.
The Cavs seriously need to shape up. I get it, they’ll be locked in come Playoff time, but what will you say if they’re getting challenged in the Playoffs? “Oh they’ll lock in soon”. Lock in now! There’s nothing better than to get momentum before the Playoffs.
