The Cleveland Cavaliers’ post All-Star push toward the playoffs didn’t begin the way anyone wanted. After his team’s 116-109 home loss to the Orlando Magic on Thursday night, though, JB Bickerstaff was hardly pressing the panic button.
“We just gotta continue to do what we’ve done,” the Cavs coach stressed to reporters. “We’ve played really good basketball, and we just have to do that. We’ll be fine.”
Cleveland shot 55.7% from the field and doled out 31 assists, impressive numbers against a top-five defense made all the more notable because Donovan Mitchell missed Thursday’s game due to illness. Rest assured his absence was palpable despite that gaudy two-point shooting and the Cavs continuing to ping the ball across the floor.
The Cavs turned the ball over a whopping 19 times, bothered from the opening tip by Orlando’s blend of aggression, length and physicality defensively. Nearly as damaging? Cleveland hit 45.5% of its long-balls versus the Magic, but only managed 22 three-point attempts—six fewer than the team’s previous low this season.
Darius Garland and Max Strus each scored a team-high 18 points, but took just eight threes between them. Isaac Okoro and Georges Niang were the only other Cavs to attempt more than two shots from beyond the arc, with Sam Merrill held to just a pair of tries in 11 minutes off the bench and Evan Mobley missing his only try.
An increase in three-point frequency helped drive Cleveland’s red-hot play entering the All-Star break. Mitchell takes a team-high 9.1 triples per game and is more comfortable launching off the dribble than any of his teammates. It was always going to be difficult for the Cavs to get up their average rate of threes—38.5%, eighth-highest in the league, per Cleaning the Glass— against a defense like Orlando’s without Mitchell.
Still, Bickerstaff believes Cleveland could’ve been a bit more aggressive letting fly from range. Isaac Okoro and Georges Niang were the only other Cavs to
“I do think there’s opportunities for more threes out there. Taking the ones that are there and then a little bit earlier before the close-outs happen, those types of things,” he said. “Again, give them credit. They’re a really good defensive team and they limited our threes tonight.”
The Cavs are back in action Friday against the Joel Embiid-less Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center.