What We Learned: Cavs vs Celtics
The Cavs completely dominated the Celtics on Tuesday night. There was absolutely no area of the game Cleveland didn’t dominate. Here’s what we learned from the Cavs’ lopsided 110-79 win:
• LeBron seems to pass someone on the scoring list on a weekly basis. On Tuesday night he passed up Ray Allen for 21st on the NBA all-time scoring list. He finished with 27/5/3 in just over 25 minutes of play. It’s a good day anytime LeBron plays around 25 minutes.
• It’s good to have Kyrie Irving back. There’s no doubt in my mind the Cavs would’ve won their game Sunday against the Rockets if Uncle Drew was in the lineup. He finished with 18 points on an efficient 6 of 10 shooting. Irving has been great for the Cavs all year. Sometimes you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone. That was certainly the case when the Cavs played the Rockets. We saw just how much they needed him. It’s good to have him back in the lineup.
• Kevin Love’s defense is still struggling. He sometimes shows flashes of better defense, but overall he’s still not where we want him to be. He let Boston’s Brandon Bass score 15 points on him tonight. Bass is a good player, but I don’t want to see him scoring more points than Love. That being said Love didn’t play horrendous defense, we just would’ve liked to have seen a little more from him. Love finished with 12 points on 4 of 10 shooting.
• LeBron James can actually make free-throws!!!!!! LeBron silenced his critics by knocking down all 3 of his free-throws in an absolute blowout. I guess we won’t be seeing creepy mirror selfies from LBJ tonight on Facebook. All kidding aside, I’m glad he knocked down his shots when he went to the line. The last thing we wanted to see was him go into a free-throw shooting slump. Surprisingly the Cavs didn’t miss a shot from the line the whole game in 14 attempts.
• The Cavaliers can make NBA squads look like JV teams. I know it was the Boston Celtics, but you have to admit the Cavs looked great. They completely dominated Boston in absolutely every facet of the game. Cleveland shot 13% better from the field, grabbed 10 more boards, and had 26 more points in the paint. Not to mention they pushed the lead to 44 at one point in the contest. On Tuesday night, they dominated a poor Celtics team, but they’ve shown throughout the season they can make good teams look bad like this as well.
The Cavs will travel to Toronto to play the Raptors on Wednesday night. I expect that one to be a closer game to say the least.
Jackson Flickinger
pic credit Cleveland.com
