I just watched JB Bickerstaff’s press conference after the game and after a couple of questions from others, the Cavs presser moderator could be heard calling on “Chris” for the next question, Chris Fedor. Fedor’s question was,

“…Was there something specifically about tonight that troubled you?”

i.e.:

“It was an… unacceptable top-to-bottom no-show.

“No heart or effort. Missed layups. Comical turnovers (three of them in the first five possessions). Absurd fouls. An inability to solve the Heat zone. Baffling lineups. Abysmal body language. An overall nonchalance…”

Bickerstaff knew exactly what Fedor was referencing, he saw it, but he wouldn’t go there. 

"I'm not going to take away from what our guys have done to get us to this point, um, you know again, this is uncharacteristic, it's not who our team is..."

“Why’d you pull your starters in the 3rd quarter?”

“Oh just I mean you know you could feel there wasn't anything there...so, you know, just go to the bench and see if we could find a spark from the bench..."

Pencils seldom get anything out of coaches at these things. The coaches are experienced in parrying while saying nothing. There is no doubt in what Chris Fedor saw and wrote, and for Bickerstaff and Cleveland observers and fans tonight was shocking, disturbing, ominous with the playoffs coming fast.

"Cleveland is a sensitive city" wrote Richard Sandomir for the New York Times almost 30 years ago. The city and its residents are haunted by ghosts, the city is crowded with them, there are ghosts in every Clevelander's closet and under every bed. Doom is in every room. Today, in basketball, the ghost is 2023 when Cleveland won 51 regular season games, earned the 4th seed and home court in the first round of the playoffs, and then were bullied and out-hustled and out-effort-ed and dispatched to the off-season four games to one by New York. What Fedor saw and said and what Bickerstaff saw and wouldn't say was that ghost of shrinking submission rising again and stalking this "sensitive city". Are they to see another stellar regular season humiliatingly obliterated in the post-season--again?

So this loss, to a Miami team that had lost three straight at home, that has the worst home record among playoff hopefuls in the East, this "embarrassing" blow-out to this "Heat" team who have their own compound issues, where Cle was a "no-show," with "no heart or effort", "abysmal body language," "an overall nonchalance," that causes the heebie-jeebies in Cleveland. And with good reason.