The Cavs beat the Philadelphia 76ers earlier tonight, with a score of 108-101. Bron had 37 / 6 / 7 and 3 TO in 40:17 (note: 2.9 TO per 36 is his career average). His 37 points came a little dirty, on 12-26 shooting.
What everyone’s been talking about recently is the Cavaliers seeming lack of focus and minimal exertion of energy. The team has now won four straight by 5, 13, 10, and 7. Before tonight, the Cavs point differential was +5.52 or 6th in the NBA behind #5 Orlando (+5.83).
In other words, in the last 4 games, most everyone - including me - has complained about the Cavs apathy towards dominance … yet they’ve elevated their differential in every game except the win against Portland.
I listened to yesterday’s Cavs-Nets game on the radio, where I got to hear the legendary Joe Tait badmouth his intern for not delivering a pizza on time, openly deride a sponsor for having a poorly designed website URL, and essentially say that the game was so boring no one should be watching or listening.
Because I couldn’t watch the game, everything I heard and read about it was a little bit of a surprise - Joey T. certainly didn’t communicate the players’ level of disinterest, or place the game in any kind of context, as an example of the team’s continued bad habits and non-desire to get up for games against teams with sub .500 records.
You know how the saying goes: “Ignorance is bliss.”
And sometimes I wonder if we don’t all get into a habit of over-analyzing everything the Cavs do. After all, we live in the Matrix - a world with reams and reams of information. We can listen to the game on the radio, watch it on TV, sometimes we can watch it on TV with two sets of broadcasters (FSO and ESPN), we can read numerous blogs about it, multiple newspaper stories, investigate advanced stats…
Sometimes, just maybe, we need to say - Cavs win by 7. And that’s all that matters.
