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Cavs get stomped by Spurs, slip to 2nd in East for 1st time this season

Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports / Action Images

Is this what rock bottom looks like for LeBron James and company?

The Cleveland Cavaliers continued their mystifying late-season slide Monday night with perhaps their ugliest loss of the season, a comprehensive 103-74 thrashing at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs.

The loss was the Cavs' eighth in their past 13 games, and dropped them to 8-10 since the All-Star break. It also dropped them behind the Boston Celtics to second place in the Eastern Conference, for the first time all season. If it wasn't already clear, the Cavs have some soul-searching to do with nine games left in the regular season.

Even before their post-All-Star nosedive, there had been signs of trouble. The Cavs' defense has been a porous mess for months, particularly on the road, where they've now allowed opponents to top the 100-point mark in 27 straight games stretching all the way back to mid-December. They came into Monday's game ranked 23rd in the NBA in defensive efficiency.

Against the Spurs, they finally showed some signs of life at that end, but their offense was a catastrophe. They were sloppy with the ball, getting pickpocketed 11 times and committing 19 turnovers overall. They were stymied at the rim, didn't get to the line, and struggled to generate clean looks from outside. They shot 4-of-26 from deep. This is the same team that set an NBA record by drilling 25 threes in a game less than a month ago. The Cavs actually defended pretty well in the half court, but they got burned in the open court off all those misses and turnovers.

More generally, they simply did not play with any force in this game. Passes were thrown without purpose, aimless drives were swallowed up, possessions were dawdled away. On one trip, as the shot clocked ticked down to three, J.R. Smith abandoned ship, and started running back on defense while the possession was ongoing. James was badly outplayed by Kawhi Leonard. The Cavs were completely overwhelmed.

In one sequence that seemed emblematic of their entire night, James urged coach Tyronn Lue to call timeout and reinsert him into the game, despite the fact that he'd been on the bench for just 90 seconds of game time. Lue acquiesced, and James proceeded to have the ball stolen by Leonard on the first possession out of the timeout.

"They're just so fast," Lue said of the Spurs after the game, according to ESPN's Ramona Shelburne. Asked whether the Cavs' inability to keep up was the result of a lack of athleticism or simply fatigue, Lue answered: "Probably both." Neither would appear to bode well going forward.

"We've got nine games to figure it out," Lue said, according to ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "And I'm confident we will."

All of this would perhaps be of greater concern if the Cavs hadn't made mincemeat of the rest of the East in the past two postseasons, or showed how terrifying they can be on both ends when they flip the switch the way they did in last year's Finals. Virtually all of James' teams the past six seasons have entered the playoffs with at least some measure of doubt - they've been the No. 1 seed just twice - only to definitively lay them to rest when the real season begins.

But none of those teams have been this poor defensively. None of them have looked this sluggish and discombobulated at this point in the season. They'll remain the overwhelming favorites to win the East until another East team actually beats them four times out of seven, but as of now, this doesn't look like a team capable of challenging the Spurs or the Golden State Warriors in the Finals.

"I'm not worried about anything," James said after Monday's debacle, according to Tom Withers of The Associated Press. "We've done it before."

They have, indeed. But that doesn't mean they can do it again.

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