I will take liberties with Dickens’ classic and call these thoughts “A tale of THREE cities”. The Cleveland Cavaliers had 3 games in 4 days this week, actually 4 in 6 days if you include Sunday’s game, but let’s stick to the weekday games.
Tuesday the Cavs upended the Mavs 121-119 as Max Strus was on fire raining threes including a 59-footer as time expired. That made it number 5 with 3:42 left in the game. Reminiscent of JR Smith’s quick buckets into the 3rd quarter of Game 7 in 2016 (although the stakes were much higher at that time!) Strus started his barrage and nailed 4 x 3’s in one minute and seven seconds. Max also had a huge defensive rebound after his onslaught subsided which led to a Spida Mitchell “three”! Rebounding IS important. Bottom line is Max’s shot has been disappointing until the 57th game of the season so here’s hoping the stroke has arrived AND will stick around. BTW Darius Garland was getting lit up the next day by the folks cut from the same cloth as the Browns rabble when in reality DG was a +12 the highest of any starter.
Wednesday was a different story and indeed you may call it a “schedule loss” as the Cavaliers were beaten in double OT by the Bulls 132-123. to get to 2 OT’s and lose by 9 tells me the tank was empty and to add insult to the injury the Wine and Gold was outhustled and lacked effort vs the Chicago Bulls. MUNCH, HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT? Well, my friend, the proof is in the pudding (I always wondered what the heck that meant) as the Cavs were outrebounded 74 to 39! By…Andre Drummond for the most part who had TWENTY-SIX freaking rebounds…9 on offense and 17 on defense. Truly that is unacceptable. I also wondered where Sam Merrill was in this game. Oh, I know…riding the pines. With Strus going 3-10 and Niang 0-3 from three-point land it makes sense that Shootin’ Sam would have played.
The road warriors were at it again Friday evening in the Motor City vs the awful (record wise) Pistons and if you need a panacea the 9 wins “stones” are the prescription! Cleveland came away with a 110-100 “W”, but it was not as easy as you would think. Ok, it was a breeze for 3+ quarters but in the 4th the Cavs 24-point lead evaporated as they were outscored 28 -14 in the 4th. Detroit got it down to a 7-point deficit with 1:22 left but the talent discrep went the way of the Cavaliers. It should be noted that Mitchell and LeVert did not play in this game. Garland made 9 shots from the field in this contest and 8 were three pointers (8-12 from behind the arc. Mobley had a very nice game with 22 points and 13 boards and Allen hauled down 15 rebounds.
The Knicks are in Cleveland Sunday night and are losers of 4 in a row. No Julius Randall is totally doing a number on this squad.
So, what did the TALE OF THREE CITIES show us? The opponents were not the Good, Bad and Ugly but VERY GOOD, DECENT and SCRAPPY BUT NOT GOOD and the Cavs handled their business in 2 of the 3. Mitchell is a STAR and it’s time Mobley and Allen continue not only to improve but do it on a consistent level. Okoro is getting better daily, DG will continue to be the “whipping boy” in spite of being a very good player and Strus needs to make buckets.
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Please take care of each other and it’s your world, pay attention. Always enjoy every sandwich and for now ADIOS AMIGO, long may you run.
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