Not a lot to latch onto in this one. The Cavs coasted to what I can only refer to as a non-blow-out against the Nets tonight. Calling it a close game would be an overstatement, since after the Cavs reclaimed the lead in the 2nd quarter, they never gave it back, and I don’t believe the Nets ever got closer than 5 points, with that deficit coming in the 3rd quarter. But it wasn’t exactly one of the more inspiring performances of the season.
On the one hand, I can see people really bagging on the Cavs for this one. They didn’t manage to win by double digits despite being at home against a team that came into their building at an abominable 4-46. Lebron had to play all but 6 minutes. The Nets shot 51.4% overall, including 45.5% 3PT—all without starting PG Devin Harris or well-regarded back-up Chris Douglas-Roberts.
The performance of Coldstone’s crew *could* be seen as particularly disappointing since it’s the second consecutive game in which they’ve allowed an established crap team to stick around til the end of the game. Saturday’s match-up against the Knicks wasn’t exactly a signature win, as we all recall. So in all those senses, it’s not totally unjustified for cynics to squint their eyes a little after this one.
All that said…the Cavs shot 52.7%, outrebounded the Nets (albeit by only one TRB), handed out 27 AST on 39 FG, picked up 11 steals, and kept their TOs down to the single digits (9). The bench scored 39 points, including a career-high 17 from Jawad on 50% FG and 3-5 3PT. My usual source for advanced stat box scores hasn’t posted tonight’s yet, so I can’t confirm how many close-range baskets the Cavs scored. My impression is that the answer is “a lot.” So it’s not as if they played a poor offensive game (with the exception of Z, who shot a positively Arctic 1-10 from the floor). In fact, those look like the types of numbers you’d see in a blow-out.
Long story short, the Cavs just weren’t playing very hard on D. And I can’t really get upset with them about it, honestly. Again, the team they were playing was 4-46. It’s their next-to-last game before the All-Star break. And I would also argue that the Nets were having an anomalously good shooting night. (Find me the last time that Jarvis Hayes shot 50% 3PT, and let me know how many minutes of sorting through box scores it took. He’s averaging 25.4% on the year.) Plus, as we all know, every bad team in the league gets up to play the best.
And despite all that, the Cavs won by a comfortable 7 points. I would even argue that trying to look at how many minutes people played is a little deceptive, since I think they were going at less than maximum effort. Even if you don’t accept that point, the two main guys you’d want to look at weren’t really excessive. Bron played a whopping 3 minutes over his season average (38.7 min/gm) and Shaq played right at his average (23 min / gm).
Windhorst noted before the game that a lot of scouts in the league refer to scouting the Nets as “a night off” because they basically only run 3 plays. Hard to argue that the players should treat it differently, since I doubt they’re as obsessed with keeping their point differential as high as possible, unlike Mike and me.
The bigger question is: how are they going to play against Orlando on Thursday night? My guess is that they come out with the type of fire we’ve come to expect from them over the course of the past couple of months and win easily, even though all indications are that Delonte won’t be back on the floor until after the All-Star break. If they don’t, THEN it’ll be justified to take a few shots. But in the mean time…
Win streak: 12 games (best in the NBA this season). Days to trade deadline: 9.
-T.
