Lue sums up Cavs' mystifying loss: 'That's just us'
For a team that's led the Eastern Conference practically wire-to-wire, it's been a pretty weird, wild, roller coaster of a season for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
At times they've looked like the league's most locked-in team, poised to repeat as champs. Other times they've looked so disinterested and defensively discombobulated it's difficult to imagine them even making it out of the East. No two-game stretch has better epitomized their Jekyll-and-Hyde act than the one they just played.
Cleveland produced one of its most complete games of the season Wednesday night, demolishing the Boston Celtics on the road, on the second night of a back-to-back, to all but lock up the East's No. 1 seed. Two nights later, with a day of rest under their belts, against an Atlanta Hawks team that was on zero rest and literally playing without its entire starting lineup, the Cavs laid an ostrich-sized egg. The Hawks' scrubs hung 114 points on them and routed them by 14. Good luck making sense of that.
Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue didn't bother to try.
"That's just us," Lue told reporters after the game, according to Tom Withers of the Associated Press.
"That's who we've been," he added. "That's who we are. I hate it. These games like this come back and bite you, especially down the stretch when you're trying to get some rest. Trying to hold onto that No. 1 seed and getting rest and you come out and have a performance like this, it's not good."
To that last point, Lue had said before the game that he wants to get some rest for LeBron James and Kyrie Irving before the playoffs start, but doesn't plan to hold them out of any games until the Cavs clinch the No. 1 seed. They could've lowered their magic number for that spot to one by beating the zombie Hawks. Instead, James and Irving may need to play out the final three games of the season if they're to hold onto No. 1.
"You expect for us to want to get better and we were doing that," James said. "And we took a couple steps back tonight."
The Cavs will get another crack at the Hawks when they complete their home-and-home set back in Atlanta on Sunday.