To a man, the Cavaliers thought they got better against the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday night at Wells Fargo Center. Yet they still walked away with an 86-79 loss, their sixth straight.
“One thing we talked about coming into this game was improving on the defensive end, and I thought we did that,” Cavs coach Byron Scott said as his team dropped to 2-8 overall, 1-6 on the road. “That’s a small accomplishment, and we’ve just got to look to try to continue to build on that.”
That is not to say Scott wants any of his players to feel the least bit satisified.
“We should get discouraged,” he said. “We don’t like losing. You would hope that now [losing] six straight, you would hope that guys get a little upset about it, a little [ticked] off, a little angry — all those things. If you don’t then you really don’t care about winning. If you are in that locker room and are a little ticked off about the way we lost or about losing, then it shows that you care. That’s the most important thing.”
Players quietly went about their business in the locker room after the game. On one hand, they could take some solace in the fact that they held the Sixers to 42.5 percent shooting for the game, a vast improvement from Saturday night, when the Mavericks shot 51 percent. Though the third quarter, Philadephia made just 39.7 percent of its shots. But the Sixers hit 11 of 22 shots in the fourth quarter to pull away from the Cavs and improve to 7-4.
Former Ohio State star Evan Turner led the Sixers with 19 points and Spencer Hawes, always a problem for the Cavs, had 14 points, nine rebounds and four blocked shots.
“I think we got better on defense tonight,” said the Cavs’ defensive leader, Anderson Varejao, who finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds. “We played good defense against Dallas, but in the fourth quarter we let them shoot 59 percent, which was bad. Tonight I believe we got better on defense. We have to keep playing that way. At the end of the game they made shots. That’s why they won the game.”
Alonzo Gee led the Cavs with 17 points, in spite of a nasty fall on his back near the end of the second quarter.
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