Know Your Opponent: Illinois Fighting Illini
November 13, 2015Ezekiel Elliott, Silver Bullets lead Buckeyes to 28-3 win at Illinois
November 14, 2015Cleveland Cavaliers 90
New York Knicks 84
[Box Score]
It won’t be remembered as the prettiest game ever played, but the Cleveland Cavaliers were able to grind out a come from behind win in New York against the Knicks on Friday night. The Cavaliers had a solid enough first quarter, but for the rest of the game it was a sluggish, slow game with far too much isolation basketball for the Cavaliers.
People are often inclined not to be too critical of a team in a win, but I disagree with that to a certain degree. Sure, the outcome of the game is the only thing that counts in the W/L columns, but in reality, it should be far easier to be critical without elevating frustration in a game that is a win. I say this, because the Cavaliers deserve some serious criticism for this game. The Cavaliers have played such good team basketball this season so far, but this game was almost a complete regression back to the bad habits and bad offensive system of last season.
The Cavaliers won’t have much time to take anything away from this game as they play again on Saturday in Milwaukee, but hopefully Cavaliers coach David Blatt is able to use what little time they have to reinforce how fortunate the Cavaliers really are to have been able to win a game when they played as poorly as they did. It’s nice when you have LeBron James on your team and he can go into Superman mode and almost singlehandedly win a game for you, but it’s even nicer still when you don’t have to use your crutch.
After the game, Coach Blatt mentioned that the Cavaliers “won without our fastball tonight”. He specifically stated that the Cavaliers played differently on offense in this game than they have all season, referring to how much the ball stuck and players (not just LeBron) routinely over-dribbled, didn’t recognize the mismatches, and failed to pass the ball the way this team is capable of. But Blatt also mentioned that maybe they played this way because they had to, because the old way certainly wasn’t working. There might be some truth to that. Great teams find ways to win even on nights when they’re not playing particularly well. As long as this was an aberration, it’s not a big deal. But it will be worth watching to see how Cleveland plays in Milwaukee tomorrow. Will they get back to playing the unselfish basketball we’ve seen so far or will they continue to rely on the isolation game? It’s just something to keep an eye on.
But hey, it’s a win and tomorrow’s a new day. For the Cavaliers, they just continue to find ways to win and they are now chasing the best start in franchise history.
Cleveland's 8-1 start is their best since the 1976-77 season. That team went 9-1, lost game 11. https://t.co/nXtITOB2WW
— Jacob L. Rosen (@JacobLRosen) November 14, 2015
Now let’s look at the numbers.
- 153 – I have to start here, with an extremely heavy heart. I had the Cavaliers game on TV, of course, but a good portion of my attention was glued to my computer as I followed the horrific events of the terrorist attack in Paris. At the time of this writing, the death toll is at 153, but that number is still expected to rise more information comes in and events unfold. It’s another reminder of just how fragile life is and how much it sucks that such violent extremists exist. It will never, ever make any sense to me why people can’t just be good to each other. Anyway, my thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Paris on this evening.
- 31 – Often times when a team finds themselves in an ugly slugfest, they really have to lean on their defense to win. That was no exception for the Cavaliers on this night. In the second half, the Cavaliers’ defense was superb as they held the Knicks to 31 points on just 26.8% shooting from the field. In particular, LeBron James really ramped up the pressure on Carmelo Anthony. In the first half Melo was killing the Cavaliers with 22 points, but in the second half with LeBron draped all over him, Melo was held to just 4 points.
- 12 – One game after scoring 17 points in the 4th quarter, LeBron James played the hero once more putting up 12 much needed points in the 4th. LeBron was a force on both sides of the floor. As mentioned above, his defense on Carmelo was incredible, but LeBron was also able to provide the Cavaliers’ offense some much needed relief as well. LeBron finished the game with 31 points overall, which was enough to secure a win for the Cavs.
- 12 – The last 12 mentioned above was a good stat. This one, not so much. The Cavaliers finished this game with just 12 assists. Coming into this game, the Cavaliers were averaging 25.9 assists per game, good for 3rd in the NBA. It is unacceptable for this team to have a game with just 12 assists. Prior to this game, their season low for assists was 21. The Cavaliers average 300.6 passes per game, but had just 277 passes in this game. For some reason LeBron, Mo Williams, and Matthew Dellavedova all seemed to just dribble the ball an awful lot rather than initiating the offense earlier in the shot clock. I don’t know why this change happened tonight, but it’s the first time we’ve seen this style show its ugly face this season.
- 29 vs 61 – The Cavaliers offense was fine in the first quarter. They had 7 of their 12 assists in the first quarter and they scored 29 points on 55% shooting from the field. However, they only scored 61 points and had just 5 assists in the following three quarters combined. It’s hard to put a finger on what caused the shift. Some of the credit goes to the Knicks. Indeed, the Cavaliers’ previous season low of 21 assists also came against the Knicks in a game at The Q on November 4. So perhaps the Knicks just matchup in a way with the Cavaliers that stifles their offense a bit. Whatever the case, the Cavaliers’ offense was good in the first quarter and it was quite bad the rest of the way.
- 20 – On a night when the offense wasn’t clicking and LeBron was at times trying to do everything himself, Mo Williams came up big with 20 points of his own. Mo has shown this season to have a really nice feel for when the team needs a basket, and Mo has thus far been able to deliver. Tonight Mo hit big shot after big shot at moments when the offense was really stalling to keep the comeback hopes alive. Then, in the fourth quarter, Mo was able to knock down four huge free throws on a night when the Cavaliers really struggled from the free throw line as a team.
Ok, ok, enough with the negativity on a Friday night. No, I did not like the way the Cavaliers played against the Knicks, but I am extremely happy with the way they still found a way to win a game they probably had no business winning. A lot of credit is owed to the defense and to some timely shooting at big moments. Now the team goes to Milwaukee on Saturday night where the Cavaliers will hopefully try to get back to playing their style of basketball.
10 Comments
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Loved when LBJ decided to guard Anthony and basically turn his water off. That’s an MVP! Cavs once again played down to their opponent but turned it on late using lock down defense to win. I know they are on a win streak but I’d like to see a game where they play a full 48 minutes hard and blow someone out.
I feel like watching and critiquing this team is like the critique of the Buckeyes, where you wouldn’t say this about any middle of the pack team on an 8 game win streak, but only about a championship team comparing themselves to the top 5 teams in the league. that being said, golden state is super scary and the cavs better be ready.
i think that the matchup between Carmelo and LeBron was what brought out the ISO-Ball in the Cavs. Add in JR and Timo wanting some revenge, and you have a recipe for guys standing around, watching, trying to facilitate that sort of behavior. An unfortunate byproduct of the situation, and no big deal, if you ask me.
Except for Mo Williams – the new Delonte. He has no problem calling the coach’s plays and taking the big shots. Did he really score the last 6 points for the Cavs? Pretty clutch.
btw – i hate historical team stats like “The Cavs went 11-2 over their first 13 games and made it to Game 7 of the NBA Finals.” That’s a fake stat, but the point is that it has absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on now – this season – with this team. You are trying to compare Austin Carr, Bingo Smith, Nate Thurmond, et al to a team that doesn’t have a player who was alive when those guys were playing (I don’t think). That 1976 team has nothing to do with this team except that they are both from Cleveland.
and lastly, i thought that LeBron looked as good as he ever has last night.
I am not saying he had his best game ever, but he looked quick, fast, agile, strong, and his jumper was butter. For the first time ever, after millions of Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson comparisons, for the first time ever he looked like Michael Jordan yesterday. He was that good.
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