Saturday, December 27, 2014

Cavaliers rally in Orlando for 98-89 win

It's been  a while for a Cavaliers report between Devils games and the holidays,but I finally had time to watch a Cavaliers game!
LeBron James led Cleveland with 29 points and dragged the Cavaliers to a 98-89 win in Orlando over the Magic.
Kevin Love added 22 points with Dion Waiters finishing with 17 off the bench.

Swashbucklings

1) First,a little catchup from games that I didn't write on.
The loss of Anderson Varejao to an achilles tear for the season is one that the Cavaliers will have to address sooner or later.
Cleveland already had problems in the paint and those have just become massive.
Now for why Varejao was signed to such an expensive long term deal with an injury history?
I'll save that story for another day.

2) Kyrie Irving banged up a knee in the Christmas Day loss in Miami and missed the Orlando win with the injury.
Irving is another player with a long term contract with injury issues that I hope doesn't bite the Cavaliers in the playoffs...

3) The win over Orlando brought back memories of the days that LeBron James would put the team on his back and carry them to victory.
LeBron made the big shots and in the second half was clearly the dominant player with his aggressiveness in taking the ball to the basket,
LeBon outscored Orlando alone in the fourth quarter 15-14.
When James takes the bull by the horns and plays with aggressiveness (which is different than playing hard),there is no better player in the game..

4) Kevin Love did score 22 points,but did not play at all in the 4th quarter.
The reason? Love was having issues in stopping Nikola Vucevic.
This means that the Cavaliers are going to have playoff problems to solve with inside defense.
Cleveland is going to have to do something to address this and soon...

5) The defense was strong in the fourth quarter as noted above,but here is the key number-5 of 21 from the floor.
Sometimes this game is about more than scoring and with no Love or Irving,the Cavaliers can put a better defensive team on the floor...

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