"I'm anxious to see how we respond," Scott said before the game. "We're either going to come out fighting or we're going to lay down. There is no in between."
Actually, there was. The Cavs started slowly, fell behind by 22 in the first half, rebounded strongly in the third quarter to get within six but caved in the fourth in a 121-99 loss to the Jazz on Friday night at EnergySolutions Arena.
Antawn Jamison, playing in the 900th game of his career, had 26 points and 11 rebounds but the Cavs lost their 12th straight, their 22nd of 23 overall, and their 18th straight on the road to fall to 8-31. J.J. Hickson added 21 points and 14 rebounds, while Mo Williams had 14 points and 10 assists.
Deron Williams had 26 points and nine assists for the Jazz, who improved to 27-13. Utah had 32 assists on 47 baskets.
"It was a game of two halves," Scott said. "It was one way or another. It was the way I didn't want to respond in the first half and the way I wanted to see us respond in the second half. So it was a little bit of both.
"The first half, it was terrible -- 70 points is way too many. We've got to make sure the second half, that last 24 minutes that we just played . . . is how we've got to play against Denver. We've got to be that solid defensively. I thought the fourth quarter we just ran out of gas because we were fighting uphill so much."
The Cavs quickly fell behind, 16-9, and it looked as if it was going to be another long night. But they pulled themselves together and were within 25-23 on a 3-pointer by Jamario Moon with about two minutes left in the first quarter. Deron Williams, who had 13 points and three assists in the first period, scored the Jazz's final six points of the period as Utah took a 31-25 lead. It wasn't a great showing by any means, but the Cavs showed more life than they did at any point on Tuesday.
By halftime, Utah led, 70-50. All the old familiar problems continued, most of them defensively. Utah shot 61.7 percent in the first half (29-of-47), outscored Cleveland in the paint, 34-20, and on the fast break, 10-4.
The Cavs shot just 44 percent in the first half while committing 12 turnovers, which led to 19 points for Utah. Manny Harris had four, and J.J. Hickson and Mo Williams had three each. Four of those came in a dizzying minute that saw Utah's lead climb from 38-31 to 44-31 early in the second quarter.
But Hickson scored nine points in the first six minutes of the third quarter as Cleveland outscored Utah, 18-8, to open the second half and cut that 20-point deficit in half. A 3-pointer by Manny Harris actually got the Cavs within 84-78 with 4:03 left in the third quarter, but Deron Williams found Paul Millsap and Raja Bell for jumpers that restored Utah's lead to 89-78 with 3:05 left.
By the end of the third quarter, Utah still led, 93-83. Then the Jazz used an 8-2 run at the start of the fourth quarter to pretty much settle the issue.
"I was pleased to see the second half that we came out and had some fight in us, came out and played hard and got ourselves back into the ball game," Scott said. "I was very pleased by that, but very disappointed by the way we started as well.
"The first half, we just didn't execute defensively at all. The second half, we did a much, much better job of executing on the defensive end, and that got us a chance to get back into the game. We've got to understand we've got to do that for 48 minutes. We can't make up stuff. That's what our guys were doing the first half. They were making up stuff defensively that we just don't do."
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