CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Years ago, before stepping foot onto an NBA floor, while still playing in Barcelona, Cleveland Cavaliers veteran point guard Ricky Rubio felt the suffocating every-night pressure of a must-win game. Expectations overseas bordered on preposterous. Anything less than consistent brilliance was unacceptable.
When he left Europe and transitioned to the NBA, Rubio learned to better navigate the nightly turbulence. He avoided getting caught up in the draining emotional rollercoaster often fueled by a marathon-like regular season.
He started seeing the bigger picture.
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“It’s one of the most difficult things to do in pro sports,” Rubio said recently. “My mantra is never too high, never too low. To figure out how to be the best version, you have to go through mistakes. There are not a lot of teams that are made and good right away. They’re going to go through ups and downs.
“When we won eight in a row at the beginning, didn’t mean we were going to win the championship right away. Just like it doesn’t mean anything that we lost a couple lately. It’s about knowing who you are. We are a team that last year didn’t make the playoffs. We are really young and learning. Learning is going through experience and sometimes mistakes. It doesn’t come right away. I believe in this team. It’s why I came back here. I believe we can be really good. But it takes time.”
That big-picture viewpoint has made its way through the Cavaliers’ locker room, especially in the face of a diabolical month.
When the NBA schedule got released about six months ago, members of the organization immediately took notice of January. Cavs coach J.B. Bickerstaff included. When he helped set up travel arrangements and mapped out practice, shootaround and film sessions, the ruthlessness of January struck him even more.
“When you look at the amount of games, the amount travel, you understand it’s going to be a bear,” Bickerstaff said. “January is a tough month, but every NBA team has them. It’s not like this is the league picking on the Cavaliers. There are different moments for different teams. There are no excuses and nobody is giving us any pity parties. Have to go out and get the job done. That’s why the things that we do in training camp to put us in adverse situations shouldn’t be a surprise when we have to face a little bit of adversity during the season.”
It’s a similar scenario every year, with Disney on Ice at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse sending the Cavs on a lengthy early month trek. But the January grind was more unforgiving this time.
Sixteen games in 30 days. More than half on the road -- a place where the Cavs have been strikingly unrecognizable. Thirteen against playoff/play-in teams. Two sets of back-to-backs. Eight time-zone changes. Donovan Mitchell’s exhausting return to Salt Lake City. Ricky Rubio’s emotional debut following a 380-day recovery from a torn ACL. That’s just the schedule-related portion.
Mitchell played sick for a few days and then got hurt, missing six games this month. The Cavs went 2-4 without him. All-Star hopeful Darius Garland sat out twice. Dean Wade -- a versatile forward who was going to be a staple of Cleveland’s nightly rotation -- returned from a seven-week absence deep into January. The Cavs are 3-2 since his comeback.
With Wade and Rubio back, Bickerstaff has been experimenting with different lineups and combinations, while also trying to reintegrate the duo and find minutes for everyone -- an impossible task given Bickerstaff prefers to keep his rotation tight, unwilling to expand to 11 or 12.
The rotational tweaks have led to short-term flubs.
“Adding those bodies to the team in the season is one of the hardest things to do,” Rubio said. “No time to do five on five and make the mistakes in practice first. We have to figure out how to be the best version of ourselves. We have tools and weapons to be a dangerous team and I think people sense that. At the end of the day, it’s part of the process. We have to learn.”
After a flying start, going 8-1 to open the campaign and raising expectations even higher, adversity hit, causing the Cavs to slightly stall out over the last few weeks. They haven’t won back-to-back games in more than three weeks.
As a result, criticism has been lobbed at Bickerstaff for his lack of in-game adjustments, at-times predictable offense, roster management and decision-making, faulty after-timeout plays and minute allocation. Some of that criticism is warranted. Bickerstaff hasn’t been perfect and still has plenty to prove, especially in a playoff series. Some of it is nonsensical, over-the-top, sports-talk-radio-type commentary that unsurprisingly ignores his role in setting the culture, managing personalities, creating special team chemistry and getting the team to buy into a defense-first mentality while also playing hard (mostly) every night and repeatedly rallying from double-digit deficits.
He’s done that despite juggling 19 different starting lineups and a still-flawed roster with a dearth of shooting and two-way wings -- the most prized components in team building.
Cleveland’s 8-7 record in January -- including an inexcusable loss to short-handed Golden State, a bewildering throw-away in Utah and a blunderous finish on the road in Memphis -- has led to fanatical claims that a young team with a 31-21 record, good for fifth-best in the formidable Eastern Conference and seventh-best in the NBA, is somehow underperforming.
Never mind that the Cavs are No. 1 in defensive rating, 10th in offensive rating and second in net rating. Or that they are one of just three teams to rank top 10 in offense and defense -- title-contending Boston and Philadelphia are the others. Or that they have the league’s second-best point differential.
Counting only the 15 games this month, the Cavs are 10th in defensive rating, 12th in offensive rating and seventh in net rating.
“There are games we’ve had on the table I thought we could have closed out and finished, but this isn’t a league where you skip steps,” Bickerstaff said prior to Sunday’s demolition of the undermanned Los Angeles Clippers. “We need to take care of business, but there’s a learning process. You look at where we started in building this thing to where we are now, and we’re far along. You look at the group that is amongst the top teams, and how many of them have 21-, 22- and 23-year-olds who are their primary targets for the most part? There are experiences our guys have to learn. We’re in a great spot. Obviously, we left a little food on our plate in some circumstances, but we’re above or beyond where we expected to be.”
It’s hard to argue when comparing Cleveland to other upper-echelon squads -- even though Boston, Milwaukee, Brooklyn and Philadelphia have always been, and should continue to be viewed, in a separate tier.
Philadelphia started 1-4. Mighty Milwaukee has had multiple losing streaks, including a four-gamer. Boston has somehow lost to rebuilding Orlando three times and gone through a stretch already with five losses in six games. Even star-studded Brooklyn has two four-game slides, including one recently following Kevin Durant’s injury. The Nets are just 4-6 without Durant.
What the Cavs have gone through can be frustrating and disappointing, especially given the nature of some of the slip-ups. But it’s also … common.
The 73-win Warriors don’t exist anymore. Neither do the Jordan-era Bulls. Every contender is flawed. And Cleveland’s clock isn’t ticking as rapidly as other ones.
The road record is ugly. The late-game mental breakdowns and fourth-quarter collapses can be tough to stomach. But it’s all part of the journey.
The Cavs have been saying for months their goal is to peak in April and May, not January or February. Given the youth on this roster -- and some health- and schedule-related circumstances tied to their current record -- there’s reason to believe they can keep growing organically the remainder of this season and beyond even without external additions at the trade deadline. Although this aggressive front office bettering the roster before Feb. 9 shouldn’t be discounted either. They remain active in pursuit of upgrades.
“We’re a playoff team right now, but we’re working for something bigger,” Rubio said. “We have to go through a bumpy road to get there. If we have to lose some games on the way to figure it out and be good at the end of the season, then I will take it.”
Mitchell, a Rubio protégé, had the same thought.
“The biggest thing is understanding and having more grace with us as a group,” Mitchell said Monday. “Where we want to get to, a lot of us haven’t been and we’ve got to understand that a lot of the teams we’re playing, they know what it takes. They know how to approach each night. Understanding the energy they are going to bring. I think we all want to say we’d love to learn and be in the second seed right now, but at the end of day, that’s not the case. Got to continue to build and grow, and the season is far from over. Keep our eye on the bigger picture. I think we’re doing a good job of that, but also having patience with ourselves and understanding that we’re growing into what we want to be.”
Before leaving for their most recent road trip, Bickerstaff talked to the team about that topic. Those chats happen regularly. It was just the most recent one.
Approaching the All-Star break, entering the dog days of the NBA season, and with the second-easiest schedule remaining, Bickerstaff thought it was important to take stock of where they were. Not just their place in the standings but how much they’ve already evolved throughout the season and where they can still improve.
“When you start integrating bodies back into the lineup and figuring out your rotations, guys who haven’t played in a while, it’s going to take a minute,” Bickerstaff said. “This is a team sport and each individual has an impact on the next. All of us get caught up in the moment, especially in game, you get frustrated because you see what is available. But when you sit back and look at it, no team has ever not gone through these situations before. Every team in this league has had a three-, four-, five-game losing streak. It’s part of the deal. You play 82 games for a reason. I will repeat it: We are in a good place.
“You’re working your way toward an end goal and you’re hopeful you’re at your best when that end goal comes.”
Time will tell. But that time isn’t now.
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