Larry Nance Jr. came up short in chasing this loose ball Wednesday. (Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Cavaliers lost their fourth straight game to open the season -- the first time that's happened since 2003-04 when they lost five consecutive out of the gate during LeBron James' rookie campaign.

Here are five observations following the 102-86 loss.

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Playmakers lacking

Tristan Thompson and Larry Nance Jr. led the Cavaliers in assists on Wednesday night. The two primary centers. Nope, that's not a typo. They each had four.

Starting point guard George Hill had zero. Backup lead guard Collin Sexton had one.

As a team, the Cavs had just 18 against the Nets. And on the season, Cleveland ranks just 25th in assist percentage (52.8).

Now, it takes a team making shots to pile up assists so the numbers require some perspective, especially on a night when the Cavs were adding enough bricks to speed the renovation of Quicken Loans Arena by a month.

Cleveland shot 34-of-89 (38.2 percent) from the field and 3-of-18 (16.7 percent) from 3-point range. Perhaps Hill and Sexton had helpers that weren't officially credited. But these low assist numbers can't continue.

The Cavs' assist leader through four games? It's a tie between Nance and Cedi Osman. They are both averaging 4.0. Kevin Love is next, averaging 3.5.

The Cavs miss LeBron James. Duh.

They miss his leadership. They miss the confidence that stems from playing alongside him -- a widespread belief that no deficit is too great, no challenge is too tough. They miss his on-court voice, directing traffic on the defensive end and teaching from the bench.

Most of all, the Cavs miss his shot creation.

A roster lacking playmakers, the Cavs have to work extremely hard on the offensive end to generate quality looks. Some players have looked frustrated, just settling for whatever is easiest on a given possession. That's a nasty habit. The overall shot selection reflects that. So, too, does the vanishing of Kevin Love during the second half in the 16-point loss against the Nets.

Love attempted two shots after halftime. No one could get him the ball. When the Cavs tried, Brooklyn loaded up and forced Cleveland to turn elsewhere. That's what happens without a great passer, one capable of squeezing the ball into a tight area, the way James could.

"I don't even think it was really that I passed too many up," Love said. "I was trying to make the right play, trying to get guys involved. But plain and simple, the shots didn't really present themselves. Couple of them, especially that last 3 at the end, kind of threw it up to get myself going and get my wind up.

"But I need to find ways to get more shots and get the ball in better spots and try to find ways out of double teams to set guys up. It's going to take all of us, not just me."

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Kevin Love and the rest of the Cavaliers are struggling beyond the arch. (Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

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3-point woes continue

I wrote about the Cavs being too enamored with the mid-range shot early Wednesday morning. The numbers are alarming and the trend continued against Brooklyn.

On the night, the Cavs attempted 31 mid-range shots -- 13 more than the amount of triples they launched.

For the season, they have now hoisted more frequently from that in-between area than they have from beyond the 3-point line.

They have JR Smith -- a career 37.4 percent long-distance shooter. Kyle Korver is one of the greatest shooters of all time. Few bigs possess Channing Frye's perimeter stroke. Love has won 3-point contests. Hill has finished a season better than 40 percent three times.

So what gives?

"You know it's an easy thing to say, 'Let's just go shoot some 3s,' but you've got to be able to create 'em and you've got to take good shots," Korver said. "A lot of theirs were off drive-and-kicks, there's higher percentages on those types of 3s. But certainly 3-for-18 or whatever we were tonight is not going to get it done in today's NBA."

Only one team had made fewer triples than the Cavs this season. It's Oklahoma City, which has played just three games.

Golden State's Stephen Curry has made more himself (33) than the Cavs have as a team (28).

"I think most of the 3s today are off drive-and-kicks," Korver explained. "Unless you have LeBron James on your team, there has to be multiple actions, multiple drive-and-kicks, you've got to make defenders do multiple things on the same possession, that's when there's breakdowns and that's when guys get open shots.

"Right now our offense is a work in progress in that area. We've got to get to multiple drive-and-kicks, we've got to get to multiple actions and not just all these mid-range 2s that we're shooting right now. So, those are things that we can do, but we have to be aware and we have to keep working on it."

Love went 2-of-5 from deep. He's now 7-of-24 on the season.

"We need to start shooting them and start making them. Plain and simple," Love said. "We have a lot of shots that we were shooting with contested 2s from deep, right inside the line. This is a league now where it's about pace and space and a lot of teams are shooting the ball from 3 exceptionally well and tonight, especially for them in the second half, that's what they were doing."

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Defensive tweaks

Seeing poor results, the Cavs scrapped the switch-everything plan against the Nets. Instead, they wanted to switch 1-4, with Thompson guarding the 4-man. That's intended to keep Love from repeatedly being put in precarious one-on-one situations like Sunday against Atlanta's prized rookie Trae Young.

Love's role was to drop on pick-and-rolls or ICE -- sending the ball-handler to the sideline, away from the screen in the middle of the floor.

"He did a phenomenal job," head coach Tyronn Lue said of Love's defense. "I thought just not letting the roll get behind him, not letting (Jarrett) Allen get a lob at the rim. They threw it to him on the pocket pass, Kevin got back to him and made him take tough shots, which he missed with a body between him and the basket."

Allen scored 10 points on 5-of-9 from the field. He entered the night averaging 13.3 points.

The other notable change: The Cavs eliminated off-ball switches.

"I thought our guys are not ready for that," Lue said. "We stayed locked in -- lock and trail, was physical trying to blow up screens and DHOs (dribble handoffs), which is pretty good for us overall."

It led to the Cavs' best defensive performance -- aside from the horrendous third quarter that left some players in a surly mood.

"We did pretty good the first I would say about 26, 28 or 30 minutes and then just got away from us in a big way," Love said. "Transition defense we talked about this morning and we thought we did a really good job getting back and loading to the basketball. But a lot of our rotations and schemes have broken down a little bit in ways through the game."

The Cavs held the Nets to 102 points on 43.7 percent shooting.

Cleveland forced 14 turnovers and gave up a season-low 46 points in the paint. As for the transition defense, that was better too, as Brooklyn scored just one fast-break basket.

The overall defensive rating was a respectable 105.2. It was good enough to win. The offense was the culprit Wednesday night, tallying a ghastly rating of 87.8.

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Tristan Thompson needs to see more physical effort by his teammates. (Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

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1, 2, 3 Cancun

Thompson didn't love the team's fight on Wednesday night. He believes it's been better in two road games, which actually bodes well for the Cavs, as they play the Pistons in Detroit Thursday night.

Without having the talent to push them to wins, the Cavs need to outwork opponents. They need to scrap. They need to play hard for all 48 minutes -- even against the Eastern Conference also-rans.

"If we don't fight you can cancel Christmas," Thompson said before starting his media gathering. "It will be 1, 2, 3, Cancun."

At the end of a Lakers practice during a series in the 1998 Western Conference finals, the Lakers gathered together for the usual "1,2,3, team" chant. But Nick Van Exel ad-libbed with "1,2,3, Cancun," in reference to the team's impending summer vacation.

It's become a prevalent joke in the NBA when a team feels they are out of the playoff race and counting down the days until vacation. That's when they break the huddle with that chant.

Thompson was joking about the Cancun part. The Cavs aren't there yet. But there's nothing funny about what he perceives to be a lack of grit in the last two games.

If things don't change quickly, the boulder will start rolling downhill and Cleveland will have to reverse course in an attempt to preserve their first-round draft pick that could be headed to Atlanta.

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Ty Lue has a challenging balancing act. (Tony Dejak, Associated Press)

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Lue's conundrum

There is a bit of a push-pull going on within the Cavaliers. It's common in the NBA.

The front office would clearly like to see the younger players get a bulk of the minutes and earn valuable experience in tightly-contested games.

After all, that group can be both the present and the future if it's balanced correctly. That means Sam Dekker, David Nwaba, Jordan Clarkson, Sexton, among others. Winning with them -- if it happens -- can be extremely important as the front office attempts to construct a functional new core while also trying to evaluate those guys for the future.

Lue clearly sides with his championship-tested veterans, putting Smith at power forward to get him more playing time and using Korver once again.

Lue wants to win by any means necessary and he should -- even if that comes with contributions from players who won't be in Cleveland beyond this year or the following season.

You can see the conundrum. It will likely be ongoing throughout the season.

It would also lead one to believe that Frye's time could be coming. It didn't happen Wednesday. He was inactive for the game.

After the Cavs plummeted to 29th in defensive rating following three straight losses, it would have been difficult to justify inserting Frye somewhere in the lineup. His defense is a liability.

That's part of Lue's other issue.

Yes, he could turn to Frye for his offense, hoping to get more floor spacing and shooting. Theoretically, Frye is the perfect addition to give the Cavs a boost from beyond the arc. But playing him could lead to problems at the other end, and the Cavs can't afford that.

Each one of Lue's possible rotation tweaks will only help one end of the floor and he's been trying to pick and choose what's most important. There is no simple solution.

That's what happens with a roster lacking enough two-way players.