Cleveland falls flat in Tyronn Lue’s first game as head coach

If the Cleveland Cavaliers wanted a quick fix, the team might have to wait a few days.

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Tyronn Lue’s first game as Cleveland head coach, in the wake of the David Blatt firing that shook the NBA, resulted in an ugly 96-83 loss on Saturday to a Chicago Bulls team playing on the second half of a back-to-back. The setback wasn’t as lethal as the squad’s 34-point drubbing at the hands of the Golden State Warriors from last Monday, but considering the primetime broadcast television stage and the easy narrative of Lue’s first game, this has to sting.

Pau Gasol had 25 points, 10 rebounds and six assists for Chicago, leading the team in all three categories. Derrick Rose, working through what has been an impressively potent January, missed 16 of 21 shots but also watched as several of his misses spun in and out. His drive off a broken play and dish to Taj Gibson (15 points, eight rebounds, two blocks) helped seal the deal with 1:49 left in the contest, as Gibson’s finish and free throw after a foul turned an eight-point advantage into a dominant 11-point advantage.

Meanwhile, Cleveland looked as clueless as ever.

Any Cavs fan hoping for the typical sort of blowback you see when a team fires an unpopular coach was left wanting, as the Bulls held Cleveland to just 14 points in the first quarter on its way toward a 21-14 advantage. LeBron James attempted to play the role of facilitator, which is understandable to a point, but it left James, point guard Kyrie Irving and forward Kevin Love lost in the malaise as Chicago dug in defensively.

Worse, the Cavaliers showcased a startling lack of touch from the free throw line. The team missed nine of its first ten from the stripe, 13 of its first 18, and 13 of 22 overall. The Cavs also missed 20 of 24 three-pointers, as the Bulls forced the league’s fifth-ranked offense into its second-worst offensive showing of the year.

The 83 points Cleveland scored tied its output against Golden State on Christmas Day, and the 76 points the team scored against Portland the night after may have been enough to cost Blatt his job. Reportedly, the Cavaliers just about threw that second contest in response to their former coach’s shortened rotations against GSW; but new coach Tyronn Lue basically ran the same game plan on Saturday in Cleveland. Richard Jefferson did not play, Mo Williams only took in three minutes, and Lue worked most of the loss with an eight-man rotation. Cleveland’s bench shot just 3-14.

James nearly had his first triple-double of the season with 26 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists to just one turnover, but he was matched by the indefatigable Jimmy Butler in the loss. LeBron missed 16 of 27 shots and could be seen barking at his teammates several times. Butler added 20 points on 8-16 shooting with nine rebounds and zero turnovers, constantly talking defensively while aiding Rose in ballhandling duties over 42 wearying minutes.

Minutes played, again, after the Bulls had lost in Boston on Friday evening. Cleveland had all it needed for a statement victory against a Chicago team that had been drained the night before. On a rare nationally-televised ABC contest that served as an extended sports talk radio session for analysts Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy for the first half in the wake of the chat-worthy Blatt firing, the Cavs were expected to not only hold up the “new coach, 25-point blowout win”-narrative that we often see in the NBA. The Cavs failed to put the hammer down against an inconsistent team that was not only playing a few states over from where it worked 24 hours ago, but without rotation mainstays Joakim Noah, Mike Dunleavy Jr., and Kirk Hinrich.

Toss in Rose’s streak of bad luck around the rim and you’d expect the East’s best team to roll toward an easy victory. Instead, the Cavalier offense stayed stagnant, and the helpers (Love made half his shots, Irving missed 11 of 16) failed to step up while James bordered on playing the martyr yet again.

This was Chicago’s win, however. They had every reason to lie down and play according to NBA script, and instead the Bulls dug in defensively and moved to 2-0 on the season against the defending Eastern champs. Despite Cleveland shooting itself out of things at the free throw line, the Bulls won this more than the Cavs blew it. Chicago can’t be trusted to show up on its home court against teams from Minnesota or Phoenix, and it did lose against the Warriors by 31 on Wednesday, but usually if you give this team a national TV setting and championship-worthy opponent, the Bulls tend to show up.

Nobody should have expected the Cavaliers to have sussed it all out in the 29 hours between Blatt’s firing and Saturday night’s tip, but that was never the motivation here. The whole point was to come through with one of those classic, “new coach, new era, here’s a blowout win”-performances that, despite often acting as fool’s gold, are part of the NBA routine.

They couldn’t even muster that.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops