Cavaliers take down Lakers 120-11 in Kobe's final Cleveland appearance
BY STONE LEXINGTON
CAVALIERS BEAT WRITER
The Cleveland Cavaliers hosted the Los Angeles Lakers Wednesday night, but the game was an afterthought. The Cavs are one of the best teams in the NBA with the best record in the Eastern Conference, while the Lakers have the worst record in the West. Entering the night, the result of the contest was never in doubt. The primary storyline was future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant’s last game in Cleveland.
Bryant has already announced that this will be his last season in the NBA, and his farewell tour made its latest stop against LeBron James and the Cavaliers. The Cavs defeated the hapless Lakers 120-111 in Quicken Loans Arena, but the night was all about Bryant and his last meeting with James in Cleveland.
“I like how we started the game,” Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue said. “I didn’t like how we finished the game. We took our foot off the gas. We started messing around a lot out there on floor and they came back and made some threes.”
Before he was introduced, the Cavs (38-14) showed a video presentation of some of Bryant’s finer moments from his career. When he was introduced, Bryant may have received the loudest ovation an opposing player has ever received in The Q. The fans in The Q showered Bryant with chants of “Kobe, Kobe, Kobe.”
Bryant started the game scoring the Lakers (11-44) first two points, a 15-foot jump shot that resembled vintage “Vino”. The shot tied the game 2-2, but Cleveland dominated from that point forward. The Lakers, who are one of the worst defensive teams in the league, trailed 35-25 when the first quarter ended. Cleveland’s lead only grew in the second quarter as the Cavs took a 62-47 advantage into halftime. Cleveland led 93-74 when the third quarter ended as the James and Bryant individual dual was largely one-sided.
James, who passed Paul Pierce (26,166) for 15th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, finished with 29 points, seven rebounds and 11 assists. Cavs point guard Kyrie Irving finished with a game- and season-high 35 points with three rebounds and seven assists. Bryant didn’t have the night he hoped to have, totaling 17 points, six rebounds and three assists in 33 minutes.
“I think it’s obvious,” James said of what he’ll remember most from his last matchup with Bryant in Cleveland. “Kobe’s last game here in Cleveland. I remember when he was a rookie and I was watching from home, and him here in the Slam Dunk competition, going between the legs and taking it home, a champion of that dunk contest.
“Our fans, they love great athletes, great people and they paid respects to one of the greatest ever. I’m just happy to be a part of it.”
Bryant has played in seven NBA Finals in his career, winning five rings in the process. Meanwhile, James has played in six NBA Finals, but the two superstars have never faced each other for a championship. Bryant was asked if it was weird that he and James never battled for ring on basketball’s biggest stage.
“I don’t know if weird is the term I would use for it,” Bryant said after pausing a moment to contemplate the question. “Our teams just never crossed paths, unfortunately. I don’t want to say it was weird or anything like that, it’s just the ebb and flows of the season.”
In what could be classified as news, Bryant said his relationship with James has never been as sour as some have made it out to be.
“We’ve been close,” Bryant said. “We talk on the phone probably more than people know. We talk about the game. We talk about different strategies that center around the game.
“We talk about things off the court, business related, players association related. There’s much more communication than I think people want to, you know.”
Earlier in Bryant’s and James’ careers, it seemed like the two weren’t particularly close. Bryant has always been one of the fiercest competitors in the NBA and never really showed closeness to any of his league counterparts. However, as his circumstances have changed over the last few seasons, Bryant’s views on playing against some of the NBA’s other great players has changed.
“We’ve always kind of had conversation on the court,” Bryant said of his meetings with James during his career. “It was never a nasty competition, we played against each other. It was never that way.
“I just think, now it’s a little different being that this towards the end. Last year when we played against him, my team being out of the playoffs and things like that — What’s at stake changes a little bit. I get a chance to enjoy competing against him and against D-Wade and these other guys a little bit more, and kind of enjoy their company a little bit more and enjoy the talent that they have a little bit more.”
Although James and Bryant have been in the league together since 2003, the two have never been pitted as rivals. Part of the reason for that is the two never did meet in the NBA Finals. James never had to go through Bryant’s Lakers like Michael Jordan had to get through Isiah Thomas’ Detroit Pistons, and Bryant didn’t enter the league already embedded in a heated rivalry with James like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird did.
“I wouldn’t say he was a rival,” Bryant said of James. “I never looked to see what he was doing or something to kind of push me. I just felt like we were just completely different generations, like I just missed that thing completely — Not like a Magic and Bird sort of thing, it was more like, from the time he came into the league it was more helping him, giving him direction, advice. I was just so much older by NBA years.”
Bryant, who played with Lue for three seasons as a member of the Los Angels Lakers roughly 15 years ago, spoke about his time with Lue as a player and his opinion on how Lue has garnered the respect of personnel around the NBA.
“He’s always been a student of the game,” Bryant said. “He was a very sharp mind. He picked up concepts very, very quickly.
“We had very complicated concepts, and he was able to pick them up very quickly. He has a good demeanor about him, a good disposition about himself. He doesn’t get too rattled. He always stays pretty poised.”
One of Lue’s job as the new Cavs head coach is getting the most out of James, Irving and Kevin Love. The Cavs have tried to work out the dynamic between James, Irving and Love since the three joined forces last season. It’s been a tumultuous learning experience for Love, who is still finding his footing with the Cavs.
“It sounds strange, but you can’t try to make the pieces fit,” Bryant said. “In other words, you can’t compromise to make pieces fit. That probably goes against anything you’ve ever heard.
“But the reason Shaq and I figured out how to make it work is because neither one of us had compromised. And because of that, you had this incredible storm, and through that storm we were able to figure out how to make pieces fit. If you come out and say ‘ok, I’m going to step back and do this, he’s going to step back and do that’, you’re not going to figure anything out. You’re going to have conflict. You’re going to have confrontation. You’re going to have really uncomfortable times, but through that uncomfortable times, you’ll really figure out how to play and gel together. It’s a very, very difficult process to go through, but it’s one that’s extremely necessary I think.”
Love injured his left shoulder late in the second quarter against Los Angeles and did not return to the game. Lue said Love has a contusion and should be fine, but the Cavs coach couldn’t give a timetable of how long Love could be out of the lineup, if at all. The game against Los Angeles was the Cavs’ last before All-Star Weekend.
During the fourth quarter, “Kobe, Kobe, Kobe” chants filled The Q on several occasions. When he converted a four-point play with 5:35 to play, the arena erupted. As he left the floor with less than a minute to play in the fourth quarter, Bryant exited to a standing ovation and the Kobe chants echoed one last time. While fans didn’t see the individual battle they had hoped for between James and Bryant, mostly because of where Bryant is at in his career, the two all-time greats will meet again on March 10 in Los Angeles.
POSTED 02/10/2016 23:30
Lake County Sentinel
