9 Takeaways from Cavs 126-124 loss to Knicks: Same issues, different day

The Cleveland Cavalierscouldn’t do enough down the stretch to hold off the New York Knicks. They fell 126-124.

This was a showcase game for the Cavs. A chance to prove to themselves and the league that they are still a contender in the Eastern Conference.

For 38 minutes, they showed that they were. The ball was humming on offense, Darius Garland was playing like an All-Star, and they seemed to prove that they could go into a hostile environment and answer the bell.

Then, the ensuing 10 minutes happened. The Cavs blew a 17-point fourth-quarter lead largely due to their inability to grab a defensive rebound. The offense then ground to a halt as it resorted mostly to isolation attempts.

The Cavs were good for three quarters, got bullied on the glass, and needed Donovan Mitchell to save them down the stretch, but he wasn’t able to do so. It might as well have been a game from their 2023 playoff series.

For as much as the Cavs have changed in the past three and a half seasons, they still haven’t figured out their core issue.

The rebounding needs to be better. The Cavs are spending over $66 million on their two centers in Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. That’s way too much for this team’s identity to be rooted in getting bullied on the glass.

Mitchell Robinson — a reserve center who hasn’t averaged over 20 minutes a game in the last two seasons — once again changed the momentum of the game in the fourth quarter. He grabbed four of his eight offensive rebounds in the final quarter, which led to eight second-chance points.

Playing good defense for 24 seconds and forcing a miss just to see the team get another chance at a basket is demoralizing. It happening repeatedly down the stretch of a game, in a way that is all too familiar, is even more so.

Allen deserves the blame here.

Robinson was able to repeatedly bully Allen on the glass. All four of Robinson’s late offensive rebounds came against Allen. Robinson was able to get the inside position before the shot went up, he outhustled Allen, and was more physical at the jump.

It would be concerning if this were the only time this happened or the only matchup Allen has struggled with. However, this has been a recurring theme for years, and we’ve seen no signs of it changing any time soon.

This would be one thing if Allen were a perimeter-oriented big, but he isn’t. He’s a traditional center that is supposed to provide the rim protection, lob threat, and rebounding that you need when you start two skilled, undersized guards in the backcourt. Allen consistently hasn’t performed as they’ve needed him to in the biggest matchups, which included getting pushed around by Myles Turner of the Indiana Pacers in the second round of last postseason.

Allen gets unfairly blamed for a lot of the team’s issues. It’s tough to fit into a team that has this many high-usage players. That said, the rebounding and toughness issues are things that someone with his skillset is supposed to supply. And if he isn’t, this two-big structure fundamentally doesn’t work.

Mobley isn’t free from the rebounding criticism. He fell asleep on the most important defensive possession of the game as he let Karl-Anthony Towns seal the game with an easy tip-in layup.

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Losing concentration like this is inexcusable at any point of a game, let alone in that situation.

The other side of the court wasn’t much better for the Cavs. They continue to struggle to close games offensively as well.

Mitchell and Garland’s worst stretches came in the fourth quarter. Mitchell went just 4-11 from the field in the fourth while Garland went 1-5. You’d like those shot attempts to be a little more balanced, considering how well Garland was playing until that point.

This has been a theme throughout the season. As Bobby Marks pointed out on Twitter, the Cavs are now 1-8 in their last clutch games (games that are within five points in the final five minutes) and 6-12 on the season.

Cleveland is 25th in point differential in those situations. They’ve registered a 103.1 offensive rating, 115.5 defensive rating, and a -12.4 net rating in the clutch. That’s not ideal.

Many within the analytics community dismiss clutch outcomes. They believe it’s too small a sample size to draw conclusions from.

I would lean the other way. I believe that clutch situations are the closest simulation of playoff basketball in the regular season. The pace slows down considerably in the clutch, which means that you need to be able to problem-solve and beat half-court matchups in a high-pressure, slower environment. That’s what the playoffs are.

How you want to interpret the Cavs’ struggles in the clutch is up to you. What can’t be disputed is that the Cavs are continually falling flat in these situations. And a lot of their issues have come on the offensive end.

Despite how bad things ended, there were still some good things to take away from this game.

Garland continues to look more like himself as he has for the past week.

He poured in 35 points against the Chicago Bulls, had 27 against the Charlotte Hornets, and threw in eight assists in 29 minutes against the New Orleans Pelicans. In short, he’s recently looked like the All-Star he was last season.

That continued in New York. He had the offense humming, was attacking Towns in the pick-and-roll, and was comfortable pulling up for three when the defense gave him any daylight.

It’s not a coincidence that the offense has been playing up to its potential once Garland returned to form again.

The three-ball is once again falling. Cleveland went 15-35 (42.9%) from three on Christmas Day. This is on the heels of connecting on 54.5% of their threes on Monday and 40.8% on Tuesday. For comparison, they were shooting under 30% from three in their previous eight December games.

The Cavs are a three-point shooting team. Their offense will live and die based on their outside shot. That’s no different than the other top offenses in the league. What separates the good and bad ones is your ability to make threes.

Jaylon Tyson showed that he could be an impact player in a high-stakes environment. This wasn’t a playoff matchup, but it was the closest approximation the Cavs have had to one this season.

Being able to excel and adapt to multiple roles is often what makes someone successful in the postseason. Tyson has shown that he can be a catch-and-shoot three-point threat. On Christmas, he showed that he can also attack in the short roll.

The Knicks were blitzing Mitchell and Garland in the second half. They were forcing the ball out of their hands in an effort to make someone else beat them. And Tyson repeatedly made them pay.

Tyson still has room to improve, especially on the defensive side of the ball. That said, he’s shown that he can impact winning in a meaningful way by doing simple things like this well.

This was a perfect microcosm of the Cavs’ season so far. They executed well in many aspects of the game and showed signs of real growth. But the flaws that have held them back in previous postseason runs did so again when it mattered most. Until that changes, there’s little reason to believe things will be different next spring.