Recap: Business-Like on a weekend
2009-03-21
Overview: In a refereshing blowout not really reflected by the final score, the Cavs easily held their home-court against the red-hot Hawks, controlling the game defensively and cruising to a win behind 20-point efforts from James and Williams.
Cavs-Related Bullets:
Embrace the boring. We got back to our defensive fundamentals tonight, and the strangling defense allowed us to not really break a sweat in crusing to a victory.
LeBron never quite had to turn it on the whole way, spending a lot of time testing out his deep jumper (3-7 on his “midrange” shots from 20+, 1-4 from deep), and not really forcing anything on his way to a wholly unremarkable 21 on 22 attempts with 7 boards and 5 assists. (His 3 steals go to show how LeBron likes to put in effort in other places when he’s not aiming to take over the game offensively.)
Mo continued his every-other-game shooting touch, pouring in an easy 24 on only 16 attempts, including going 3-4 from deep.
Andy seemed a little gassed, with only 3 field goal attempts and no offensive boards, but Joe was there to pick up the slack, going 4-5 from the floor and putting a spin move for a layup down that recalled his Golden State days.
Delonte’s shot continues to be an issue, but he provided a lot of energy and ball movement and finally hit a three in the fourth quarter.
Big Z got his 10,o00 points with balance, hitting 3 deep jumpers and 3 from the paint. Congrats to the big guy.
…Cautious Optimism about Boobie…
Okay, props to Darnell Jackson, leading the team in offensive boards and posting a very nice 4/8/1 in 17 minutes.
2 POINTS IN 1 MINUTE FOR TARENCE.
Bullets of Randomness:
3-time All-Star Joe Johnson: Impressive tonight.
If you know of another player more likely to score 10 points in a minute in garbage time than Flip Murray, I’d love to hear it. I miss that guy. I really do.
i agree with robin. i just wanna see a strong finish going into the playoffs. I’m pretty darn sure that were not gonna win everyu game from here on out, but I just want us to come prepared for @orlando and home to boston. those are (obviously) playoff matchups so we should not play light on them, even if we already have home-court locked up. p.s. man my head is spinnin right now i honestly cant believe i just typed that whole paragraph
Very encouraging that the Cavs have been playing increasingly sound basketball. What I really hope this means is that we got through our last major slump (against Clippers, Sac, Phoenix etc.) without actually losing a game. If that’s the case and there’s no more breakdowns or injuries, we’ve got a shot at winning out which would make for a 21-game win streak. My more realistic (but still optimistic) guess is that we lose 1 more (most likely away at Orlando), and possibly either of the last two if our #1 spot is secure enough to rest guys. I probably have… Read more »
Ho-hum. A dominating performance. And you’re dead-on with Flipster. But I’ll go with Ben Gordon circa 2006. He’d have those ridiculous 4th quarters and single-handedly give the Bulls a shot when they should’ve lost by 20. You know, it was a good game if I’m sitting here talking about 2006 Ben Gordon. Nice. Darnell looked better than I’ve seen him all year. As Austin mentioned, he did look like Ben Wallace had been working with him on those tap-outs. JJ looked good in his cameo as well. And Boobie looked like the Boobie who made Detroit cry. He’s been tracking… Read more »