How the Cavs ‘Achilles heel’ doomed them in Thunder loss in OKC

The Cleveland Cavaliers’ seven-game winning streak came to an end on Sunday, as the shorthanded Oklahoma City Thunder held off the hottest team in the NBA on their home floor in a 121-113 victory. It is the Cavs’ first loss since January 30, before acquiring James Harden, Keon Ellis, and Dennis Schroder to join Donovan Mitchell, Kenny Atkinson, and Co. at the trade deadline. After falling into a 28-5 hole in the opening seven minutes due to a 10-turnover start, Cleveland battled back.

“Recovery was great,” Harden said postgame. “Don’t turn the ball over, get a shot on the rim, and then defensively, get back, stay in front of your man, contest the shot. We’re good enough. It’s just us doing it every single night. This is a different team. Even without Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander], without J-Dub [Jalen Williams], they’re still a really good defensive team, clearly.”

“Probably the best defense this league has seen in a while,” Sam Merrill added. “Even with a couple of their leading scorers out, they still have so many good defensive players. You just get that avalanche to start the game; the same thing happened last year. Obviously, we responded much better this time. Got to figure out the turnovers. But it’s not just the way they defend. Even without SGA and Jalen Williams, they really move the ball. They cut, they pass. Obviously, they shot the ball really well today.”

The Thunder made 14 of their 22 three-ball attempts in the first half, led by Cason Wallace, Isaiah Joe, and Jaylin Williams. The Cavs got into a better rhythm in the second quarter and hung around enough to create havoc with defensive pressure spearheaded by Ellis and Schroder, and the halftime gap was only nine. Merrill felt that the Cavs made the simple plays to counter the home team’s initial punch.

“I feel like we got a little sped up to start. Spacing probably wasn’t great to start,” Merrill said. “You still want to play with pace, obviously, but doing so by getting in the right spots and not playing too fast, I think, is what helped.”

Cleveland battled back to take the lead multiple times midway through the third quarter, yet wasn’t able to keep OKC at bay.

“Missed some easy looks, had some crucial defensive rebounds that we couldn’t get. I’m not really concerned about that start,” Donovan Mitchell said. “The biggest part is once we got to that point where it was 67-67, that’s to me like, ‘Alright, how do we fix it from there?'”

“I did feel like we had a couple of bad offensive possessions that got them transition buckets,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson added. “Our shot quality wasn’t great. I blame it probably more on the offense than the defense. With this team, you can’t give them possessions, whether it’s a turnover or a bad shot. They’re No. 1 in the league in transition efficiency. They cause turnovers, which equal layups. And if you take bad shots, they go down, and they score.”

Though Atkinson didn’t like some of those possessions in the latter part of the game, Cleveland still shot it at 48.3% from the field and outscored the Thunder 56-40 in the paint as a whole. The snag is that OKC scored 31 points off 17 giveaways overall at the beginning. The Cavs had 20 points apiece from Mitchell, Merrill, and Harden, but the bigs weren’t as involved against the Thunder frontcourt, likely because of the threat of their passing-lane defense.

The Cavs’ recurring problem surfaces at the wrong time

Too often, especially in the final period, a familiar issue reared its head.

“I felt like they got a couple of key offensive rebounds when we’d get a stop,” Atkinson said. “We’ve got to clean that up. To me, that’s our Achilles heel right now, defensive rebounding. They got some big ones at the end. Best team in the league, extra possessions. It really hurts you.”

“I think just the rebounding we’ve got to work on,” Mitchell said. “That’s been a consistent theme. We’ve got to rebound and give ourselves chances to get out and get there. Once we got back [from the deficit], we were just giving them extra opportunities. Some guys made shots, credit to them, they don’t necessarily always make shots. But also, it’s easier to make threes when you don’t get the rebound. Those are the things that I’m focused on. We’ll look at it on the film and be better.”

If you were to look at the stat sheet, the boards’ battle was even at 44 apiece. However, the discrepancy between Chet Holmgren’s 15 and Evan Mobley’s 2 sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the Jarrett Allen-Isaiah Hartenstein matchup that favored the wine and gold (13-7).

It was the timing of when OKC kept it alive or the pivotal points in the game where the Cavs needed to come up with the basketball that hurt them. Gang rebounding needed to be better in those situations, especially when Mobley and Allen were switching near the perimeter.

“We missed some open looks, which happens, but we couldn’t get boards,” Mitchell said. “Hartenstein, I think we were one up or tied the game, and they scored like six straight points, two of them off Hartenstein’s floaters. Little things like that. Or, we play a great possession, the ball’s on the floor, JA gets backdoored because we’re trying to scramble.

“It’s little things like that on top of the rebounding. When you’re against a team like that, every little thing matters so much. We’re not sitting here with our head down. We’ve got stuff we can clean up, and we’ll figure it out and be better.”

Ultimately, there’s no finger-pointing after the new-look version of Cleveland lost its first game.

“We did a lot of positive things,” Mitchell said. “We’re still figuring things out as a group. Even in that fourth quarter, figuring out, ‘Okay, is it me or Ev coming to set the screen? Is it JA? Is it Sam? Sam’s the roller, what are you doing?’ It’s a lot of things to figure out. At the end of the day, not hanging our heads on this one. This is part of it. We weren’t gonna go 29-0, but we still have stuff to clean up and fix.”

“Listen, this is not an excuse, but this is a tough schedule: 3-in-4, noon game,” Atkinson said. “On the road, it makes it a little different. It is what it is, and we’ve got to overcome that, but tough schedule game. I’m proud of the way the guys fought back and gave us a chance.”

While coming up short in this one stings now, it ultimately could pay off if Cleveland uses it the right way.

“This is what, our sixth game together,” Harden added. “I think it’s bigger than them. I think it’s on us every single night, no matter who we’re playing. It’s a lot of things we’re still figuring out — rotations, lineups, all that stuff. Once we get to that and figure out how we’re playing and the lineups and all that, then we’ll be much better. But credit to them, they played a great game today, and we’ve still got some work to do.

“Games and reps. You see this team. They’ve had failures in the postseason a few years and they finally get over the hump. All of this takes time, so these games are very valuable. We have to cherish them like they’re practices in games because it’s our sixth game. Lesson learned. Watch film, get better, and be ready to go for next game.”

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