For three days since returning from their epic 11-day road trip, the Cavaliers had a singular focus in practice. Defense. How to play it, how to play it better, how to try to actually stop some opponents from scoring in the ways that they did in six games away from Cleveland — all but one of which was a loss.
Confident that the Cavaliers had learned from his hours of instruction, coach Byron Scott unleashed his young team on the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday at The Q.
And still, the Mavericks hit 51 percent of their attempts as Cleveland fell to Dallas, 103-95.
The Cavaliers, who dropped to 2-7 in losing their fifth straight, sank just 38 percent of their field goals. The combination of poor defense again and shots not falling had a predictable outcome.
It is not one that will stop Scott from reiterating the same defensive focus on his young team — fourth-youngest in the NBA at 24.351 years — again. And again.
“Everybody in there knows we’re young,” Scott said. “But young is also a cop-out. We’re still basketball players. It’s just a matter of guys learning, picking it up quicker on both ends of the floor.”
The Cavaliers did notch one small-but-significant victory — surviving an injury scare with Kyrie Irving. The Cavaliers’ star point guard trotted off the court and into the locker room clutching his left hand during the third quarter. He emerged just in time for the start of the fourth quarter with his left index finger wrapped and a report that X-rays on the bruised digit were negative.
Irving later reported that he somehow caught his left hand on Mavericks guard Darren Collison’s foot, and that the injury affected how he performed in the fourth quarter — when he had 10 of his game-high 26 points, but when the Mavericks sank 59 percent of their field goals and outscored Cleveland, 28-22.
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