The Bulls somehow stay alive, while LeBron and the Cavs stay in 'a bad spot'

The Cleveland Cavaliers held an opponent under 100 points on Thursday for the first time in seven games, and for the first time in a road game since mid-December. And yet, despite a more active defensive effort than they’d mustered in weeks, and despite LeBron James generating enough offense to pass Shaquille O’Neal on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, the Cavs came up short yet again, falling to the Chicago Bulls, 99-93, in a game that did little to assuage mounting concerns over the well-being of the defending NBA champs with the playoffs just two weeks away.

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Coming off disconcerting back-to-back losses to the Washington Wizards and San Antonio Spurs, the Cavs opened Thursday’s nationally televised game strong, forcing 10 first-half turnovers and holding the Bulls to 34 percent shooting through two quarters to take a nine-point lead into intermission. In the locker room, though, the Bulls appeared to remember that they were playing on TNT …

… and they came out for the third quarter on fire, making seven of their first nine shots in the period in a 15-5 run that gave Chicago the lead. The Cavs would answer back behind some tough buckets by James and Kyrie Irving, and a couple of Tristan Thompson dunks, but the Bulls mounted another charge late in the frame, an 18-5 spurt fueled by the playmaking of all-but-forgotten (except when it’s national TV time) point guard Rajon Rondo and the shooting of Denzel Valentine and Nikola Mirotic.

The Bulls carried a seven-point lead into the final frame, which the Cavs promptly chopped down to two after a pair of jumpers by J.R. Smith and Channing Frye. But Chicago slammed the door from there, pushing the lead back up to 10 on a fadeaway jumper by All-Star Jimmy Butler with just under seven minutes remaining and never looking back, keeping the misfiring and discombobulated Cavs at bay until the final buzzer.

Mirotic continued his scorching recent play, leading the way by scoring a season-high-tying 28 points for the third time in four games. The Montenegrin forward shot 9-for-14 from the floor and 6-for-11 from 3-point land, adding 10 rebounds and one assist in 38 minutes. Butler did his part, too, scoring 25 points on 10-for-17 shooting with six rebounds, five assists and two steals in 38-plus minutes for the Bulls, who improved to 36-39 by securing a somewhat stunning 4-0 season sweep of LeBron and the Cavs.

Rondo struggled with his shot, missing 10 of his 13 field goal attempts, but dropped 15 dimes, grabbed nine rebounds, snagged a pair of steals and blocked a shot in his 36 minutes. Valentine (12 points, six rebounds) and Bobby Portis (nine points, four boards) also pitched in off the bench for Chicago, who have now won 20 straight regular-season games broadcast on TNT, and who now trail the seventh-seeded Miami Heat and eighth-seeded Indiana Pacers by one game in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

“Very important,” Butler told TNT’s Lewis Johnson after the game. “We need ’em all. As we talked about before the game, as we’ll talk about after the game, as we’ll talk about tomorrow and every day after that. We’ve got to have these.”

The Cavs don’t have to have these, necessarily. They’ve already punched their tickets for the postseason, and they remain in the minds of many the favorites to come out of the Eastern Conference for the third straight season, no matter how much they struggle down the stretch of the regular season. But Cleveland has now lost three straight, four of its last five, and 11 of 19 since the All-Star break to fall to 47-27. Only the woeful and tanking Los Angeles Lakers have allowed more points per possession in the month of March than the Cavs, who have once again fallen into second place in the conference, a half-game back of the idle Boston Celtics.

Just how bad has this March been for Cleveland? How does “arguably the worst single month for a LeBron Cavs team since his rookie season” grab you?

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James once again led the way, scoring a team-high 26 points on 11-for-20 shooting with 10 rebounds, eight assists, a steal and a block in 39 minutes. But even with LeBron authoring another big night, Cleveland continued to seem out of sorts at times on both ends of the floor:

Irving needed 20 shots to score his 20 points. Kevin Love needed 10 to score eight, and while he pulled down 10 boards and handed out four assists, he was frequently out of place and out of step on defense, fouling out in just 20 minutes and 33 seconds of floor time, his fastest disqualification ever. Thompson scored 15 points but struggled to control the paint, as Chicago ripped down 15 offensive rebounds and scored 21 second-chance points. Back in the lineup after missing two games with a sore knee, Iman Shumpert offered little; Deron Williams offered even less.

As much as those of us who’ve seen LeBron-led teams turn it on when the money’s on the table continue to urge caution when it comes to hitting the panic button in Cleveland, the Cavs’ persistent post-All-Star break inability to get stops or generate much high-value non-LeBron offense does make you wonder if they’re really in trouble this time. James himself might not start sweating until the final seconds are ticking down on Cleveland’s fourth loss in a playoff series, but he’s acutely aware of just how much of a grind everything seems to be for the Cavs these days:

So, too, are the rest of the Cavs, who apparently had a positive and optimistic little post-game chat about just how much everything stinks right now:

Nobody doubts that the Cavs’ top dogs are the kind of “motherf******” who want multiple championships, not just the one they earned last June. Or that there’s a version of this Cleveland team that can play at a significantly higher level — in terms of moving the ball and moving without the ball, in terms of shuffling and communicating on defense, in terms of staying locked in throughout every possession (which not even the King does every night) — on a play-by-play, game-by-game basis.

The longer we go without regularly seeing that version, though, the easier it becomes to wonder whether Cleveland — which has gone 21-20 over its last 41 games, barely playing .500 ball for half a season; which has been a bottom-five defensive squad for three full months; and which, due to myriad injuries and midstream signings, still hasn’t developed any sort of rotational rhythm or consistency — will be able to muster a more sustainable answer to its problems than to ask its four-time MVP to step into the phone booth and come out wearing a cape.

Asch was talking about Thursday’s game, but you’d be forgiven for applying the logic to the bigger picture. LeBron might be able to lift Cleveland out of this “bad spot” by himself. The questions about the team’s fitness for a title defense won’t stop coming, though, until we start seeing other Cavs pulling their own weight in the process.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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