Ray Allen says ‘no thanks’ to the NBA—for this season
March 4, 2015The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance and an Unexpected Amount of Andrew Hawkins: While We’re Waiting…
March 5, 2015Cleveland Cavaliers (39-24) 120
Toronto Raptors (38-23) 112
[Box Score]
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Whether it be on WFNY podcasts or in previous posts here on WFNY, I’ve frequently said that there’s not too much to be taken away from one regular season NBA game. The NBA is less about the individual moments and games, and more about the body of work. You look for trends, habits, streaks, etc. From there, you extrapolate what you can and you formulate thoughts and opinions based on what you’ve seen.
Forget all that for one night, though. This game? I wanted this game. Going on the road in the second night of a back-to-back and walking away with a win against the #2 team in the Eastern Conference would be huge.
For a while, it appeared that it wouldn’t even be a contest as the Cavaliers built a 19 point lead in the third quarter. And then, the Raptors stopped missing shots. As Toronto went on a scorching tear hitting seemingly everything, the Cavaliers lost their composure on offense which led to them chasing their tails on defense. And before you knew it, early in the fourth quarter the Raptors had completely erased the Cavaliers’ lead and turned it into a Cavaliers deficit. It was one of the most frustrating stretches we’ve seen in recent weeks.
To the Cavaliers’ credit, though, they didn’t give in. The Raptors kept draining crazy shots and the Cavaliers would just come back down and match them. In the end, it was just too much LeBron James in the fourth quarter and Cleveland found a way to pull out a huge road game.
The Cavaliers are now in a three-way virtual tie with the Raptors and Chicago Bulls for the two seed in the East. Cleveland is one win up on the other two now, and it sets up another enormous matchup on Friday in Atlanta. The Cavaliers are simply playing great basketball right now and Friday is going to be a truly great test in what could potentially be an Eastern Conference Finals preview.
Now lets get into some numbers…
- 77.9% – With 3:43 remaining in the third quarter, Greivis Vasquez hit a three pointer for the Raptors to cut the Cavs lead to fourteen points. From that point on, the Raptors shot a blazing 66.7% from the field including 77.9% from three point range (7 of 9). If you need to wipe out a big deficit, shooting like that is one way to do it. The Raptors also hit 13 of 14 free throws over that same period. Lou Williams alone scored 23 points in that stretch. When you see those kind of numbers, it’s really amazing that the Cavaliers found a way to win this game.
- 29, 26, and 22 – The Cavaliers big trio played like a big trio in this one. LeBron James had 29 points, Kyrie Irving had 26 points, and Kevin Love had 22 points. In the first half, it was Kevin Love’s show as he was hitting big three after big three to help the team build an early lead. Kyrie was incredible attacking the rim throughout the game and with LeBron on the bench it was Kyrie who was trying to keep the team afloat. And then in the fourth quarter, LeBron took over scoring 15 points in the final quarter. LeBron also had 14 assists and 6 rebounds to come up a handful of rebounds shy of a triple-double. It’s been said frequently, but it bears repeating. The Cavaliers are an awfully tough team to beat when these three players are on their games. Despite the Raptors’ incredible second half performance, it still wasn’t enough to overcome the Cavaliers’ big three.
- 14 – In a night in which the Cavaliers weren’t getting much from their bench, it was James Jones who came up big once again. Tristan Thompson went scoreless while Iman Shumpert and Matthew Dellavedova only scored two points each, it was Jones who scored a timely fourteen points to lead the bench unit. With Shawn Marion out with an injury, Coach Blatt has turned to Jones and Jones has been ready to answer the call. Jones knocked down four of his seven three-point attempts and his shooting presence also helped space the floor for LeBron and Kyrie to attack the lane.
- 28 to 14 – In the second half, it wasn’t just outside shooting that helped the Raptors make their run. Toronto also outscored the Cavaliers 28 to 14 in the paint in the second half. If there’s one issue I take with this game, it’s Coach Blatt’s second half frontcourt rotation. Tristan Thompson had zero points and zero rebounds in the second half. Yet down the stretch it was Tristan on the floor while Love and Timofey Mozgov sat on the bench. Without Mozgov’s rim protection and Love’s rebounding, Jonas Valanciunas was pretty much able to do whatever he wanted. He scored 16 points and had 8 rebounds as he basically tore apart the Cavaliers’ interior. As the fourth quarter was winding down, the Raptors needed to catch up to the Cavaliers, and they tried to do so from the perimeter, so perhaps Blatt felt Mozgov wasn’t needed, but it was still surprising to see Love spend so much of crunch time on the bench.
- 26, 26, and 25 – While Kyle Lowry sat out this game as he continues to try to recover from his nagging injuries and subsequent slump, the Raptors found a big three performance of their own. Valanciunas and Lou Williams had 26 points each, while DeMar DeRozan had 25 of his own. In previous seasons, the Raptors have been working on remaking themselves as a defensive team. For whatever reason, this season they have been struggling on defense, but they’ve been able to remake themselves as a very deep offensive team with plenty of guys capable of having big nights. The Cavaliers have been one of the best teams at defending the three recently, but tonight the Raptors were able to attack the Cavs defense from the inside-out. The Cavs’ defense seemed to be scrambling most of the night and the Raptors were able to use some great ball movement to keep feeding good outside looks, with Valanciunas, Williams, and DeRozan all able to find scoring opportunities in different ways.
It feels great seeing the Cavaliers pull out a win like this. It would have been awfully easy for the Cavaliers to let this one slip away. And they could have excused it as being tired from playing on the road in the second night of a back-to-back. But with a big game looming on the horizon, the Cavaliers didn’t pack it in. Instead, they rose to the Raptors’ level and came up with a couple stops in the fourth quarter to secure the win.
They won’t have long to savor this one, though. Friday night in Atlanta is going to be a huge game between the East’s two hottest teams.
27 Comments
“Forget all that for one night, though. This game? I wanted this game. Going on the road in the second night of a back-to-back and walking away with a win against the #2 team in the Eastern Conference would be huge.”
darn tootin’
Color me impressed with this win. It would have been so easy for the Cavs, the road team, to just fold when Toronto took the lead in the 4th. In fact, in the last 4 years that’s probably what would have happened.
And I’m pretty sure James Jones has made the Ray Allen ordeal moot.
Bring on ATL!
yeah, can’t imagine that Ray Allen could have come in and been hotter than Jones is right now. Now I see why LeBron wanted him. In addition to his range and quick release, his court sense is very, very good.
Not one of Blatt’s better games. He almost got himself in big trouble for the 4th quarter when all of the Big 3 were still on the floor late in the 3rd when he should have been subbing. I guess he was going for the KO and hoping to rest them all in the 4th.
Great win. It didn’t look to me that the Cavs defense was that bad during the Raptors late run, more like the opponent got scorching hot and was fueled by the crowd. Toronto clearly wanted this game too and some guys – Lou Williams especially – were hitting really difficult 3s. And they were enabled by dribble penetration against Delly. But then LeBron’s rest was over, he strode in with that look and went all MVP. And took over guarding Williams to stop his nonsense.
And a word about Kyrie: what a stone cold marvelous talent. He makes my All-Time Clever Team, what with all the abracadabra stuff with the ball and his eyes. But it’s all functional and controlled rather than mustard, getting him or the ball from Point A to Point B. So cool to see him every night as he enters the start of his prime. Maybe it’s for the best that he has no playoff experience until now, no desperate Hero Ball habits to break under that extreme pressure.
Toronto was the 9th ranked NBA team in offensive efficiency last year (#9 in defensive efficiency too). I agree their defense this year has been disappointing, but their offense has been really good for awhile now and that is despite missing DeRozan and Lowry struggling this year.
There’s no bigger Kyrie fan in these parts than myself, but even I have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly Kyrie has not only adapted to playing with LeBron, but embraced it and has learned how to thrive in that role. It’s easy to forget that Kyrie didn’t sign on to play with LeBron. When he signed his new deal, I think Kyrie assumed this was his team. And then, suddenly, LeBron James was back on this team. So I worried a bit about how he would handle giving up the reigns to the team to another player. But he’s handled it just like he has everything else in his career. He’s learned from it and found a way to succeed.
Good point. I guess I didn’t mean to give the impression that they weren’t good offensively in the past. But Dwane Casey transformed Toronto from one of the worst defensive teams to one of the best. The focus was always on defense, and the offense worked as a by product of that. I feel like this season, though, for whatever reason the same focus isn’t there on defense. It seems like Toronto is trying to just outgun every team they play. I probably should have worded that a little more clearly in my post. I can definitely see how it would be interpreted the way you did.
29 and 14 on 16 shots. I worry that at some point far into the future I’ll look back and feel like I didn’t fully appreciate the game to game brilliance of Lebron. The play in the fourth where he got in the lane, drew 3.5 guys to him and floated a little over the shoulder pass to Love who ended up getting 1/2 freethrows. There were 5 men 6’5 and above standing in a 5×5 box and Lebron still managed to find Love with a perfect pass. Just one of 20 things he does every night that leaves me shaking my head.
Also does Blatt know something about Moz that we don’t? Like if he plays more than 25 minutes in a game he turns into a gremlin or something? I get why he had him on the bench at the end due to match ups but it seems like you could get more minutes out of him then he’s getting now. IDK chalk it up to people who know more than me.
Sooo, I couldn’t watch the game, so I was monitoring the gamecast.
We’re up by 19, and things were looking good. I see the lead shrinking, and Mozgov is missing from the lineup. The lead continues to shrink, and still no Mozgov…
Mr. Blatt, WTF!?
To be fair, Mozgov wouldn’t have stopped Toronto from raining down threes from everywhere. It was insane. But yeah, at least Mozgov could have slowed down the inside presence of Valanciunas and thus stopped some of the ball movement.
Love James Jones. Dude is always ready.
And he would’ve been on the floor to give Jonas a good WTF shove when LeBron got crushed.
That’s Perkins’ job.
Blatt still hasn’t grasped the hockey goon concept.
Apologies on my reading of it that way too. Their defensive lapse this season is certainly curious and it isn’t any one player/thing. It’s almost all of them are a little bit worse at defense this year (other than DeRozan) and it’s made the whole team worse.
Neither has the camera/producer crew. I wanted his reaction to the neck tackle. Agree though- what’s Kendrick “Street Justice” Perkins’ role here, anyway…?
total accord. As it turns out Kyrie seems to have a non-standard personality for an NBA star. Even though he’s always been the best player on all his teams since he was a kid, even though he’s a PG, he’s acted almost relieved to cede leadership to LeBron and acknowledge, through his improvement, that he didn’t know already know everything. That speaks to a kid with some combination of humbleness, being raised right and a powerful desire to do whatever it takes to win.
I’m predicting that Kyrie will thrive in his first playoffs, that nerves won’t get to him. And something about Tristan’s very mature demeanor this year makes me suspect he’ll quickly get the whole playoff thing quickly.
Scott has that covered.
https://waitingfornextyear.com/2015/03/lebron-james-kendrick-perkins-fouls/
Good thing Perk at least spoke up (and assuming that he’s going to be there if needed in the playoffs too). Otherwise, he would have been called in front of the Bob’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV7u1VBhWCE
I’ve commented similarly after every recent game. Almost like Blatt sends Mozgov to the bench lest his fouls pile up quickly (he does play awfully amped) and then kinda forgets about him in the fourth quarter. Last night Jonas was killing Tristan and Raptors were going right to the hole until Lebron finally came back in. This is the one thing in Blatt’s rotations that still puzzle me.
Part of it, I think, was that for the first time in his career Kyrie’s passing and defense is really rewarded because he has good teammates. Think about it: Who would you rather feed in the post, Kevin Love or Anthony Bennett? Who would you be more likely to give an open catch-and-shoot 3 to, J.R. Smith or Dion Waiters? Who would you want to be feeding you passes, LeBron James or Antawn Jamison? Who would you rather run a fast break with, Shump or Deng?
In the past, great passes turned into bricks, and now they turn into either assists or a return pass. In the past, great defensive plays turned into nothing, now they’re spectacular and fun dunks. And that’s why Kyrie’s getting better at those aspects of the game.
could be true. But the Cavs lost a ton of games the last few years, including games in which they had big leads, because Kyrie refused to play any defense. PGs he guarded not only went way over their season averages but penetrated and dished without interference. I don’t remember him playing a single game defensively the last 3 years the way he regularly plays this season. His defense wasn’t just the effect of losing, it was often the cause. He wasn’t interested in that.
“and was fueled by the crowd horrible officiating and the crowd’s reaction.”
David from Fear The Sword had a good walk through of this last night via Twitter.
Tristan has the better screening and ability to perform Blatt’s preference for switching on pick and roll late.
No sooner did he mention that we saw it in action on a play to DeRozan that TT guarded.
He did coach him before, so perhaps. One note worth mentioning is that Moz seems to be all out whenever he’s in the game, which perhaps he wouldn’t be able to do if he was playing 32 minutes a night.
Coming from Russia/Israel, perhaps he thought that was just a love tap? 🙂
Also worth noting on this win; Cavs are 3-1 against Raptors with all 4 games being played on the second night of back to back.
SOO……we own them in regular season playoff-type games.
I laughed loudest I have all week when the shot clock ran out on Toronto. So satisfying. Once, the guy was in the corner, looking to drive, clueless. I think another time was at the end of the half. Seems like the Cavs’ D was in their heads, regardless of the unconscious shooting.