Manny Harris, Christian Eyenga, Kobe, and the Best Box Score Ever

The era of Cleveland Cavaliers basketball between LeBron's stints was, at best, tumultuous. There was off-court drama, coaching nightmares (Byron Scott, baby!), and a rotating cast of oddball role players. Most of all, of course, there was LeBron's shadow. How fitting, then, that in the season after he left, the Cavaliers went on an NBA record 26 game losing streak.

They were bad. Really bad. For a good time, take a look at their season-recap Basketball-Reference page. Of the 19 players who filled out the roster, one is still playing in the NBA, a mere seven years later (Ramon Sessions). A long afternoon could be spent finding gems within this page. Believe me, I have browsed it at length. And from that browsing I noticed some things.

Before the streak even started, the Cavs had a pretty wild trio of losses. Starting November 30th, they lost three straight games by a combined 80 points: a 19 point loss, then a 27 point loss, then a 34 point loss. That's terrible. And yet...it was just the tip of the losing iceberg for these plucky young misfits [note: they were not overly plucky and only kind of young].

In the midst of that 26 game losing streak - losses 11, 12, and 13 -there was a trio of games where the margin of loss was even bigger. On the BR page linked above, this is shown by the red/green vertical bars near the top of the page. Red means the Cavs lost, green means they won. The length of the line indicates the scoring differential. On January 11, 14, and 15, Cleveland played the Lakers, Jazz, and Nuggets, and long red lines accompanied each one. After looking closely, I realized that they were beaten by a combined score of 360-255.

They lost three straight games by an average of 35 points. That's not one blowout and then a couple of competitive games. That's one blowout and then two more blowouts. That's three straight games of Air Bud and Teen Wolf dominating their opponents for the entire games.

In the Jazz/Nuggets games, the Cavs were just outmatched and didn't play well. They lost by 22 and 28, respectively. Both were bad losses, proven by the 80 points allowed in the first half against Denver. But somehow that first game against LA was worse. It's that Lakers game that I'm now going to dive way too deeply into.

On January 11, 2011 - Seven years ago today - the Cavaliers were beaten by the Los Angeles Lakers by a score of 112-57. Please - PLEASE - take a look at the box score page with me and take a stroll down "how is that even possible" lane.

And before we start, here's a Wikimedia photo *from that very game!* Manny Harris! Jamario Moon! Andrew Bynum! The NBA, baby!

1. The Score. 112-57 is bad. How did it get there? The Cavs managed to score no more than 16 points in any quarter in this game. The Cavs' lowest scoring game since LeBron James's return is 74, last spring against the Spurs. In that game, the worst quarter of play was the 4th, when the Cavs scored 16 points. That 74 point output against the Spurs is 30% more points than this Lakers game. That's substantial. In the first quarter alone of the LA game, the Cavs had a 4+ minute scoreless stretch and a 3 minute scoreless stretch. The game was tied 0-0 for the first 52 seconds. The Lakers never trailed after that.
2. The Speed. In order to score such a ridiculously low number of points, the Cavs must have sat on the ball for most of the game: They had a pace of 88.9 possessions per game (not sure how it's not 89 - either there was or wasn't an 89th possession, you'd think). Over the past two seasons, the Cavs average about 96.5 possessions per game. They were crawling in this one, and rightly so. Why wouldn't they just mope around the court, pounding the ball for 22 seconds and hoisting bad jumpers at the end of the clock? Anything to make this one end sooner.
3. The Efficiency. Just kidding, there was none. These stats are amazing. The Cavs had an offensive rating (ORtg) of 64.1, meaning they would've averaged scoring 64 points per 100 possessions on offense. They were terrible all season long and had an offensive rating of 102.2 for the year. The Cavs also made a staggering 30% of their shots and a smashing 1 of their 14 three-pointers. Both of those are...not great. Amazingly, if you click through to the shot chart, you can do the math and figure out that the Cavs were 14-41 shooting in the paint and 14-40 inside of 10 feet. Stuff of legend.
4. The Players. This section will get broken into sub-sections. You'll see why.
1. The starters: Cleveland's five starters managed to score a total of 23 points in about 131 minutes of action. That's...how the freshman team would perform against the varsity team at a typical high school. The bench actually did OK, sort of, but we have a lot more detail to get into here.
2. Mo Williams managed to be a -43 in 26 minutes of basketball, meaning the Cavs were outscored by 43 when Mo was on the court. He couldn't make a shot, he missed free throws (a phenomenal free thrower, typically), and he clearly couldn't slow down anyone on the Lakers. Look down at the advanced stats section: Mo's ORtg was 20. If he had played 100 possessions, the Cavs were projected to score 20 points based on his performance. I don't...I mean...how?
3. Samardo Samuels' ORtg was 22! What in the world happened here? He and Mo must have shared the floor a lot, I guess? Update: He did not. They were just that bad as a team. Two guys who managed to repel points. It's amazing.
4. Manny Harris played over 41 minutes in this game. How? Why? It was so far out of reach that it had to be mentally troubling for him to even see the floor in the 4th quarter, and yet he played the entire fourth quarter. In (some) fairness, a ton of dudes were injured at the time, but come on!
5. JJ Hickson had a usage rate of 32%. That means 32% of possessions while he was in the game featured him doing something. You may be thinking "Um...OK?" Well, for comparison's sake, LeBron James, who does everything for this year's Cavaliers, has a usage rate of just under 31%. Hickson just decided he was gonna try to be the man in this game. It did not work.
5. The Lakers. Who is the best Cavs draftee to play in this game? JJ Hickson? Or is it Shannon Brown, who played 21 minutes for Los Angeles? 
1. Four Lakers spent time with the Cavaliers and that seems like a lot. Brown, Bynum (the GOAT), Luke Walton, and former #1 overall pick Joe Smith. That foursome, in their prime, could have beaten the guys the Cavs played on this day.
2. The Lakers basically just had a good game. It's not amazing or anything - they shot well, they forced some turnovers, and they didn't give the ball away. And somehow they won by 55 points.
3. Derek Fisher's NetRtg was 90. Pau Gasol's was over 80. Kobe's was 92. They were all starters, so you'd think that's the explanation, but Devin Ebanks was 68 and he only played in the final six minutes. This Cavs performance was just impossibly terrible.
4. The Lakers led by double digits for 41:37 of this game. 
6. The Coach. I mentioned Byron Scott earlier, but oh man did he suck as a coach by this point in his career. Despite the insane blowout, he managed to make just seven substitutions after halftime (would've been 6 if not for an injury). This is a guy who publicly wanted to buck back against the trend of shooting threes as recently as 2015. His final five seasons as an NBA coach saw him go 102-292, which is a winning percentage of below 26%. And somehow this guy isn't getting hired again! In his moderate defense, the following players were all injured when this game took place: Joey Graham, Anthony Parker, Boobie Gibson, Leon Powe, and Anderson Varejao, with Christian Eyenga spraining his ankle in the 2nd half. Imagine if all those guys played. The gap could've been closer to 45.

There's more to this beauty if you're willing to take the time, but I feel like I'm pushing right up against the tolerance-limit of most anyone reading. There are minor things that this box score can lead you to, like how Christian Eyenga is younger than Isaiah Thomas or how JJ Hickson is three days older than Kevin Love, but if we start digging into that, we'll be here forever.

Things have changed. That's nice. Go Cavs.