Well, what a week of ups and downs. The week started with a narrow victory and ended with a narrow victory. Darius Garland and Max Strus paced the Cavs with 22 points each for a 110-101 win over the Pistons. Even though they pulled out the victory, it feels that the Cavs should be blowing away teams like the Blazers and Pistons. The games against the Magic and Heat might show who this team is. But before all that, let’s recap the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the week.
The Good
Objectively, a 3-1 week should invoke a way better feeling. Yet, somehow, this week’s 3-1 feels like it should have been 4-0. Also, not making it to the Knockout Rounds of the In-Season Tournament stinks. At the same time, the Cavs are in the Play-In Spots and they will need more 3-1 or 4-0 weeks to get back if they want to get into the top 4 seed chase.
The Bad
Home Record: The Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse (I still call it the Q) has not been an impenetrable fortress for the Cavs. Opponents seem to have had their way on the Cavs’ home court. Their record is 5-6 and the last loss against the Blazers led the fans to express themselves. The Cavs welcome the red-hot Orlando this coming week and hopefully, they can get their home cooking going and extinguish the Magic.
The Ugly
Fan’s Patience: Twitter generally should not be the metric to measure the pulse of the Cavs Fan, but Coach JB Bickerstaff is not very popular right now. Moreover, the heat that JB Bickerstaff is getting lately is spilling over to other platforms as well. See below.
It’s not a good thing if this is the rhetoric 20 games in, yet, it’s only 20 games in. I will worry if there are reports that the locker room is split, and people are tuning out JB. Right now it feels just like an overreaction to losing a game the Cavs should have won. Has JB had a full roster of healthy guys all season? No. Has JB figured out the Rotation of guys off the bench? No. Has he lost the locker room? No. Still, many more games to play so many more chances for JB & company to prove the haters wrong.
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