Cavaliers easily handle Clippers 115-102
BY STONE LEXINGTON
CAVALIERS BEAT WRITER
The Cleveland Cavaliers have won two straight games since a humiliating loss to the Golden State Warriors Monday night. Yet, the loss to the Warriors still lingers over the team.
The Cavs defeated the Los Angeles Clippers 115-102 at Quicken Loans Arena Thursday night. However, prior to the matchup, the focus was still on the 34-point loss to the Warriors from earlier in the week. Less than two hours before Cleveland’s tipoff with Los Angeles, Cavs head coach David Blatt was about as animated as he has been during his tenure as Cavs head coach, defending his team’s standing despite the lopsided loss to Golden State.
“You can’t always play well,” Blatt said. “You’re not going to win every game. There’s gonna be times that seemingly nothing goes right — but your effort level and your consistency in terms of your approach — those are the things that you want to see more than anything else, and I think we’ve seen that.
“That game certainly was not an example of that, but I don’t think that’s been the norm here at all — And I hear a lot of far-reaching conclusions, and personally I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it because I’m not the one that’s saying or doing those things. I think this team’s done pretty well dealing with the adversity that we’ve had. I think this team is in pretty good position, although people choose to overlook that, which I don’t think is fair. I know we are not yet at our best, and we can almost be encouraged by that because if we’re in the position that we’re in and we have where to go in terms of getting better, there’s a positive in that — A real positive. But you know what, we didn’t get here right now by being a bad team or by having all these problems that suddenly surface when you have a bad game like what we had. We work pretty hard to be, as of today midseason, in first place in our conference and with some very good wins under our belt, and with players finally getting back and being healthy. That guarantees nothing, but it shouldn’t be overlooked either. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Blatt corrected himself, not wanting to use the word “fair.”
“I don’t like that theory,” Blatt revised. “Fairness is not something I’m going to talk about. I don’t think that it’s truly indicative of what we’ve done so far this year. We had to work very hard to get to where we are — Very hard.
“We have a ways to go, but I told those that have been with us that in the very beginning of the year it was going to take us time. We weren’t a homogeneous unit from day one with all our guys out and not having a real preseason. We’re ok. We gotta get better, and we will. But it shouldn’t be overlooked what we have done so far. It’s easy to do that, but I don’t think it’s right.”
The Cavs are an Eastern Conference-best 30-11, and the team is a heavy favorite to reach the NBA Finals out of the East. Nevertheless, for Cleveland to achieve its ultimate goal of winning a championship, the Cavs would likely have to defeat the Warriors or the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals to achieve that goal. The Cavs have struggled mightily against most teams this season.
“I think on the overall, I don’t know that people always take things in the proper proportion and look at the whole of things,” Blatt said. “It at times can be a little upsetting, but we gotta play basketball. We gotta be the best that we can be, and we know that we’re a team that has the potential to do great things.
“We know we can get better and need to get better, but it shouldn’t be so easily overlooked that the team has done something this year. No-one gave us our position in the league. No-one just gave us the number of wins that we have or the winning percentage that we have, or any of those things — It didn’t just happen. Names don’t play — At the end of the day, the team does. The team has done something.”
Thursday night, the Cavs won their 39th straight game when scoring at least 100 points at home (13-0 the season) against a Clippers team without perennial All-Star power forward Blake Griffin. The Cavs had a 16-point lead at the end of the third quarter, 88-72, but the Clippers closed the gap in the fourth.
Cleveland had a 93-79 lead with 8:15 remaining in the fourth quarter following a Tristan Thompson floater, but Los Angeles immediately made its run after Thompson’s bucket. After Thompson’s basket, Clippers guard Austin Rivers converted a layup, followed by four straight points from Jamal Crawford. When Clippers point guard Chris Paul sank a layup with 6:37 to play, Cleveland’s lead was cut to six points, 93-87. From that point forward, it seemed as if the Cavs had seen enough.
After Paul’s layup, the Cavs went on an immediate 11-1 run. The spurt started with a Kevin Love three-pointer and a Kyrie Irving floater, and ended with another Love three-pointer and a J.R. Smith connection from beyond the arc. The run gave Cleveland a 104-88 lead with 4:18 to play, and it seemed to take the life out the Clippers.
“Tonight wasn’t an easy game,” Blatt said. “We played against an excellent opponent that had won 11 out of 12 — had been playing great — came in relatively rested. This is our third game in four days.”
The Cavs have dominated the Clippers of late. Since 2005, the Cavs are 17-4 against the Clippers, including last season’s 2-0 series sweep. Cleveland’s all-time record versus the Clippers at The Q is 18-3, having won 13 of their last 14 home contests over Los Angeles.
LeBron James finished with a team-high tying 22 points, five rebounds and 12 assists. Smith added 22 points, while Irving totaled 21 points and four assists. Love recorded his team-high 20th double-double of the season, finishing with 18 points and a game-high 16 rebounds.
Just before the game with Los Angeles, James was announced as an Eastern Conference starter in next month’s NBA All-Star game. It’s the 12th time in James’ 13 seasons as a pro that he has been selected as an All-Star. It remains to be seen if Love will be voted in by the coaches, but Irving’s non-selection as a starter means he likely won’t make the trip to Toronto as an All-Star. Blatt said numerous times throughout the evening that Love deserves to be an All-Star.
After the game with the Clippers, the Cavs head coach stuck up for his team again regarding negative publicity after the loss to Golden State.
“It’s about my team,” Blatt said. “It’s about my guys, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.
“My guys are out there fighting for the Cavaliers and doing the best job they can in a very tough NBA, especially because this is a team that night after night has a target on its back. They go out there and they fight and they play, and they deal with adversity like we’ve had to deal with the whole year. We are far from perfect and we are still not at our best, but that’s not for lack of effort and that’s not for lack of a good group of guys that want to do their job as best as they possibly can, and I think have done pretty well so far. We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do, but you can’t be in the situation we’re in, you just can’t be — Nobody just wrote in the beginning of the season, ok 41 games in you’re going to be in first place, 30-11. Nobody wrote that down. It wasn’t promised to us. Nobody gave us that. We had to work for it, and they’ve been working hard and doing a good job overall — A really good job.”
Until the Cavs win a championship with their All-Star laden roster, criticism will continue to come.
.
POSTED 01/21/2016 23:49
Lake County Sentinel
