Irving with the game winner
Lets do this all over again.
Tuesday night the Boston Celtics (9-10) travel to Cleveland for a rematch with the Cavaliers (8-11).
I’m going to keep this one brief. Rajon Rondo is out again for the Celtics. Anthony Parker and Daniel Gibson are out for the Cavaliers. No word yet (as of this writing) on who will be the starting SG. Coach Scott could start Irving and Sessions together in the backcourt, but then they’d be without a backup PG. Mychel Thompson could start, or Alonzo Gee could slide over to SG to start.
If I were the coach of this team, I would probably start Irving and Sessions together and then substitute Gee in early for one of them, and from there get creative in doing circular rotations of Thompson, Sessions, and Irving from there. No matter who starts, all of the above mentioned are going to be called upon to play extended minutes tonight.
As for the game itself, Boston is going to come out looking to make a point. The Cavs snuck up on them once. It’s not going to happen again. If the Cavaliers are going to win this time, they need to earn by giving consistent effort from start to finish.
I thought the last game the Cavaliers really had a lot of spacing issues. The Boston defense was part of it, but for some reason the offense kept swinging the ball deeper into the crowded side of the floor rather than moving it to the wide side. This created some clusters of defenders and bobbled passes and bad turnovers. The offense hasn’t clustered in one side that badly for most of the year, and I don’t know why it was happening in Boston. Hopefully Coach Scott has this fixed this game.
Otherwise, I expect to see a lot of the same as what we saw last game. I don’t think either team will change strategy too much. I’m sure the Celtics felt like they had the game plan to beat the Cavaliers and they just fell asleep. The Cavaliers have confidence now that they know what needs to be done to beat Boston. They just need to do it all game long.
This should be a fun rematch to watch, and I really hope these young Cavaliers are up to the challenge of holding back an angry and inspired Celtics team.
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Image Credit: Steve Babineau/NBAE/GettyImages
