CLEVELAND, Ohio - Tyronn Lue said he arrived at The Q Monday wanting to sit LeBron James.

"I should have went with my gut, but I didn't do it," Lue said.

The Cavs lost to the Pistons 96-88 on Monday night, and James was bad. Like, rarely seen this year -- that kind of bad.

Tied a season-low with 12 points on a season-worst 5-of-18 shooting (27.8 percent). A couple were blown layups. Missed each of his four 3-point tries. Committed six turnovers, but, as James said, "I probably should've had 12" turnovers.

Yes, the argument can be made that this would've been a good one for James to sit.

"One night he doesn't have the legs and that's fine," said Kyrie Irving, who led the Cavs with 30 points. "We just have to pick it up from everybody on the team."

It had been a while since James played like this. In the Cavs' five previous games, all wins, James was shooting 53.5 percent. He hadn't scored less than 20 points in a game since Jan. 20 -- a streak covering 14 games.

To find one this rotten, you'd probably have to go back to Dec. 26, that 29-point loss to Portland, during which James scored 12 and shot 4-of-13. Twenty-six games ago.

"He's the best player in the world," said Kevin Love, who scored 24 against the Pistons. "He's going to have nights off. It's not going to happen a lot."

Love meant that James is entitled to an off night. Sounds like he may also be in line for some nights off.

Lue was thinking of resting James because of the game he had turned in Sunday - 25 points, 11 assists, seven rebounds. Almost all of it against Kevin Durant, whom James guarded for virtually all of the nearly 38 minutes he was on the court for the Cavs' convincing win in Oklahoma City.

But, five days prior, Lue declared in no uncertain terms that James wasn't getting the night off in situations like this - the second night of consecutive games - until Cleveland had built a comfortable first-place cushion in the East.

Lue's declaration seemed to signal a shift by the Cavs away from a plan laid out at the start of the season to target games for James to rest for what the team hopes is his sixth straight Finals run. James had only rested one game all year, and there was Lue declaring that James was locked into the lineup until the Raptors could no longer realistically catch the Cavs.

Consider Lue's declaration null and void. The plan to rest James is back on the table, and he won't be the only one.

Cleveland has eight more sets of back-to-back games until the regular season ends on April 13. In the immediate future, the Cavs play Friday in Toronto, Sunday at 1 p.m. in Washington, and then home next Monday against Indiana.

In early March, the Cavs' four-game trip out West contains two back-to-backs. These are the kinds of games Cleveland originally intended to sit James on occasion.

"Could possibly happen, yes," Lue said after losing to the Pistons.

Cleveland leads Toronto by three games. According to a team source, the Cavs will "have to rest guys, irrelevant what happens" in March and early April, because of the schedule. That includes Irving, Love, Matthew Dellavedova and J.R. Smith.

The rest-versus-work storyline has stayed afloat since James came back to Cleveland. He's 31, played more than 44,000 minutes over 13 seasons, and has a bad back. He sat for two weeks last year, and spoke openly about hoping for more rest over the last couple weeks before the playoffs started.

This year, James has carried a different tune. He talks about feeling great and never mentions rest.

James admitted he was "fatigued" Monday night and complained of a low energy level, but he didn't want to enter into a discussion about planned games off.

"There's nothing to talk about," he said. "I mean, obviously, if coach Lue wanted to sit me I'll follow his orders, but for me I'm available every night, unless I'm injured. I've been hurt all year, but unless you injured, you play, so I'm OK with that."

Try not to make too much of James claiming he's "hurt." He said he's "been hurt for a long time, probably about six years straight now." He's illustrating the aches and pains of playing more minutes than any NBA player over the past six seasons.

The Cavs had a plan for that, and now they're probably going back to it.