Aside from the mental test, Cleveland has another challenge to face

Cleveland The Cavaliers have a myriad of issues at 13-9 in early Decemberbut aside from being short and questions of mental makeup, there is an elephant in the room that demands more urgency. The Cavs were not fast enough, nor did they have the necessary stamina during their games.

“The game is changing and we have to adapt to it,” Cleveland rookie Thomas Bryant he said after Wednesday’s disappointing loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. “I just have to be better for the whole 48-minute game.”

“He’s right, it’s a different pace,” Cavs All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell responded. “This is not last year. It’s different. We were good last year, we were solid. Now, what are we going to be this year with the way the game has changed, with the way teams are coming after us, with the way the coverages are different, the pace is different? It’s a year-to-year league, and that’s what I mean when I say this is what this is that I don’t even have to be physically ready to adjust to last year.”

More statistics support the eye test, echoing the points made by Bryant and Mitchell. Here are the Cavs’ average speed and distance, according to NBA.com:

• Offense: 4.85 mph with 8.9 miles per game
• Defense: 4.11 mph with 8.3 yards per game

Cleveland’s offensive speed ranks sixth in the NBA, while its yardage ranks 24th. Looking at the defensive side of the ball, the Cavs are top 10 in rushing, but fourth in ground coverage. Shouldn’t they be more suited to each other?

“I think what’s going on, it’s like we’re missing shots, and it’s affecting our defense,” the Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson he said on Wednesday. “It’s like, ‘Man, am I going to get back into that sprint? We just missed three 3s in a row. Are we still going to have that (heeling)?’ And I thought we lost that in the first half, where I think we missed four 3-pointers in a row. We have to be better and more resilient when we don’t make shots.”

To put it succinctly: wine and gold rush in with ill-advised blows and then do not return in time to prevent damage. And while lack of effort may be the culprit here and there, this is more about one end affecting the other more than even that. The Cavs rank second with 14.2 three-pointers attempted on a horrendous 32.7% clip and are in the bottom five in driving (42.7).

According to Glass Cleaning, Cleveland is third worst team in the league in opponent free throw rate (24.7 made per 100 possessions). His opponents are also averaging 16.3 points in fast break situations, eighth most in the NBA. Atkinson noted that this is troubling.

“I think we all know — we’ve talked about it a lot — how the league plays,” Atkinson said in his pregame press conference against the Boston Celtics. “Atlantas, Torontos, Chicagos, it’s a high-tempo league, and part of the stoppage is getting back on defense. So we had more shots (of the Hawks) just coming out, sprinting down the court; it bothers you as a coach.

“There’s a focus on that, and then, it’s kind of a repeat effort. They were doing it after hits and misses. That was disappointing because when we got them to half court, we did a pretty good job defensively. We’ve got to get better because I don’t think it’s slowing down in this league. We don’t see it all coming back the other way (we don’t see it all coming back the other way). back. They’re going to look at the Cavs and say, ‘We can run at these guys.’ So we have to do better.”

Atkinson acknowledged some of the opportunities the opposition has had so far with the long jump and the open floor, but it goes beyond that.

“We call it the spill transition,” Atkinson said. “We’ve got a guy coming in, he lays it up, he’s out. Now, they’re five-on-four right away, and can you go back to neutral? You’ve got to go back to five-on-five in the NBA. If a team has a five-on-four or four-on-three advantage, you’re in trouble to get it back and get it back to five-fi- when our defense is really good.”

Evan Mobley believes that The Cavs can do a better job to constantly control their energy and not put themselves in a disadvantageous position.

“Just to have real energy coming into every game, and if things aren’t going our way, to keep that energy high and play together,” Mobley said Wednesday. “I feel like defensively, we can slow teams down a little bit better and sometimes we’ll score a lot and the other team will score a lot as well. We really have to make some stops and not wait until the third or fourth to get those rates.”

Although Cleveland has had a demanding schedule and has faced more uptempo teams on more than one occasion, they will need to solve this problem before the snow starts to fall.

“The game is played faster,” Bryant added. “There’s a lot of things that could have gone our way before that aren’t going our way right now. We’ve just got to adapt and continue to follow our path through it all. It’s not going to be perfect for us in any way, shape or form.”

“We know we have a target on our back from what these guys did last year and what they’re trying to improve on this year, so we know we’re going to go with any team we might face. We just have to build that consistency day in and day out and we know it’s not going to be easy.”