ATLANTA: Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue still has some decisions to make at the bottom of the Cavs’ roster. Nights like Monday will go a long way in determining who stays and who goes.
To that extent, Kay Felder did nothing to lose what seems to be at least a slight lead in the race for backup point guard.
Felder scored 15 points on a night Lue rested his regular rotation players and Jonathan Holmes scored 15 points off the bench in the Cavs’ 99-93 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Lue started Felder, Dahntay Jones, Jordan McRae, James Jones and Cory Jefferson while the Hawks played all of their regulars. Lue wanted to use this game and Friday’s preseason game at the Chicago Bulls to play the guys fighting for roster spots.
“I think in practice you can scale everything back, you can kind of determine what you’re going to do in practice, how hard you’re going to play and how much you’re going to scrimmage,” Lue said. “But step between the lines for a game and it’s 48 minutes, the officials are there, the crowd is there. So seeing how they produce in settings like that is very important.”
The regulars — minus LeBron James — will be back for Thursday’s home game against the Toronto Raptors. Lue is holding James out until the preseason finale next Tuesday at Ohio State.
It was right about this time last year when James received an injection to combat back problems. He was shut down for the remainder of the preseason. This time, however, James said an injection isn’t necessary. Back problems rarely get better with age, but James at least has prevented things from worsening.
“I’ve just been very smart,” he said. “I’ve reached out to a few smart people and I’ve always taken my body very seriously. Some things you can’t control, like you know with my back, I had that issue. And I just started doing a lot of reading and trying to seek out a lot of counseling from people who’ve worked with backs, worked with bodies, and I’ve been fortunate to be put in a position where I can contact anyone that’s in a position that can help, so I’m always open to how I can recreate my body, make my body feel a lot better.”
No love for Trump
One of the veterans fighting for a roster spot, Dahntay Jones, followed James’ political lead and said it was “ignorant” for Donald Trump to justify sexist comments he made a decade ago as “locker room talk.” Jones tweeted Sunday his disapproval and reiterated it Monday.
“I thought it was an unfair characterization of what goes on in our locker rooms,” Jones said. “I thought it was basically ignorant and I just didn’t agree with it.”
Trump has apologized for a conversation he had in 2005 when he bragged about kissing and groping women, but repeated throughout Sunday night’s debate that it was locker room talk. Jones, a 13-year NBA veteran who has played for eight different organizations, said that simply isn’t the case.
“We talk about all types of different issues [in locker rooms]. We talk about politics, we talk about basketball, we talk about women,” Jones said. “But we never make the conversation about making sexual advances at women, taking advantage of women. Those are just things that doesn’t go on in our locker rooms.”
Jones, 35, is fighting for a roster spot at the end of the bench after he won a championship last season with the Cavs. He played a key stretch during the Game 6 victory against the Warriors in the Finals and remains well respected among his teammates. He scored five points Monday on 2-of-8 shooting.
Jones tweeted during Sunday’s debate, “Claiming Trump’s comments are ‘locker room banter’ is to suggest they are somehow acceptable. They aren’t.” His remarks come one week after James endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
“Ignorance in my opinion,” Jones said of Trump’s remarks. “As a man who has daughters, as a man who has a mother, who has a wife, it was just wrong.”
Jason Lloyd can be reached at jlloyd@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Cavs blog at www.ohio.com/cavs. Follow him on Twitter www.twitter.com/JasonLloydABJ.