Live Thread: Cavs @ Rockets
2016-01-15
The Cavs are playing their third installment of their tour of the Texas triangle with a matchup with the middling Houston Rockets. The Rockets went from being in the conference finals last season to trading for a drunk, firing their coach, and currently stand seventh in a surprisingly shallow Western conference. The Rockets (21-19), have won six of their last ten, and have slowly picked up steam from their slow start.
The game will mark the last of the Cavs six game road trip, their longest of the season. They’ve been road warriors thus far winning four of five after coming up short against the Spurs in the fourth quarter when they were obviously running on fumes from the OT thriller two nights before in Dallas. Coming into their contest with the Rockets, the Cavs have racketed up the frequent flyer miles with 4,590 miles on the trip. Hopefully, the team will have a little left in the tank.
Let’s Dish!
Delly the difference maker at the end of the quarter!
Nice Iman/Delly game there!
Good decision by Shump to let Delly bail him out on that drive!!!
DELLY GOIN TO THE BANK!!!!
DELLY! MVP!
I usually don’t complaint about the refs but wth.
I feel like Hardens getting a call here!
This is either a much more defensive game than I expected… or just a brickfest…
A little of both HAHA!
The UNDER was the smart money just officially speaking… HAHA!
Can we agree to shorten Hack-A-Capela to Hack-A-Pella?
lol, very good sir
Hack-a-Pella will be a subplot in Pitch Perfect 3.
Brewer poking out eyes!
Great game for our deep bench to get some run.
I guess that’s an “over the front” call on Andy???
RIchard Freaking Jefferson!!!!!
Can really use some RJ positivity tonight!
Bang from RJ and we’re tied.
Nice shot Lawson, lol.
JVG: sometimes with a deep team, you need a well timed injury to keep harmony.
That’s just smart coaching /s
Shake the rust off Andy….
I see a steady dose of Hack-A-Capella in the near future…
I’m rooting for Andy here!
Most of us are I think… minus maybe Cols…
WOW! Andy sighting!
Varejao sighting!!!!!!
Shump got fouled more on that last jumper than Harden did…
Harden must have a lot dirt on the NBA refs!
And another phantom call for Harden. This is why I hate Harden. He’s a cheap player. Take away his flopping crap and he’s much less of a player IMO.
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!
That’s early… LOL
It’s pure comedy that Harden has been to the line 21 times (and counting) more than any other NBA player…
I’m sure that will grow significantly.
It’s been a minute or two, time to send Harden to the line……
Wow… just a horrible call there… where was the foul?
Mozgov proving his defensive value early. JR looking good going to the rack.
Granted, it was Harden guarding JR both times, so that helps.
Pretty move by JR
Good drive by JR… almost makes up for that bad pass…
It’s ok, Houston didn’t score off that turnover ;)
Ah… but they could have… lol
Swish took Harden to the hoop!!!!!
Sloppy play. 5 turnovers is ridiculous.
Sloppy play!!!!!!!!!
Mozzy seems to be protecting the paint a little better… no?
Nice contest vs Harden (I think), went straight up.
Not just one, there were 3 nice contests Mozerati had in the early going.
Great pass by Lebron there.
KLOVE!
Good defense in that set. Delly giving Beverly a taste of his own medicine.
Refs seem pretty foul happy right now…
Dr. Blatt prescribes a dose of Delly.
Is that like a shot of penicillin?
Or a shot glass of Vegemite…
Dr. Blatt could probably motivate his players with that stuff. “Play well, or a spoonful of Vegemite fer ya!”
That was interesting!!!!!
Shaqtin’ a fool oops!
I find myself clenching my teeth every time Kevin Love shoots the ball.
He’s a really slow 3-Point shooter.
And he won’t shoot unless he’s 10 ft open. Can’t count how many mostly open shots he’s passed up.
The things these guys do routinely… JR was flying into the corner and made that catch-and-shoot look easy.
Mozgov fast break fail… kinda predictable though…
He almost had it!
Yeah… was thinking the same thing. Mozgov just doesn’t have the athleticism to pull that off and KLOVE should know better.
Good ball movement for that JR three though…
JR SWISH………..
JR is Mr. First Quarter!!!!!!
Inauspicious beginning I see…
Lmao. I was going to break out that exact phrase before I got distracted.
Ha! Good argument earlier on the particulars of turnovers and points off… sorry I had to bail and drive home…
Lebron- “A big guy on me? Time to fire a 3 off the glass”
Le-ISO!!!!!!!!!
Going to it early tonight. Maybe getting it out of the way and saving the good stuff for the end.
Gave up an offensive rebound to Beverly for an easy put back… and the Cavs haven’t gone to KLOVE in the post with Clint Capela guarding him.
James and Smith did look good on their drives to the paint though.
Cavs with a sluggish start. I hate the Rockets!
Gimme a team you do like?
I like the Cavs!!!!!!!
Houston’s my least favorite team in the West. I do like Portland.
Fair enough. And I don’t like the Rockets either.
I see how the refs are going to call this one
This is the type of average to good playoff team with which the Cavs should wipe the floor. Discipline alone should be enough to win
Beat maybe, but wipe the floor, on the road back to back?
Yeah I see this as another grind out type game. Especially if the refs continue to put Harden at the line.
There we go, it’s starts the phantom calls on Harden.
We’ve got JVG on ESPN!
Sam Amico should do a podcast with Sam Amick! Amick and Amico, the A to A podcast and law firm!!!
Timo starting tonight!!!!!
I imagine it’s matchup based?
Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Notes for Houston game: Dave Mc tweeted that Blatt says he’s not holding anyone out tonight. Mo is still out though and for Houston Motiejunas and Dekker are out The Cav’s are wearing they’re alternate wine jersey’s again tonight. It is a ESPN national game. Announcers are Mike Tirico and Jeff Van Gundy (I know some do not like, but hey, at least he’s not Mark Jackson) Houston was the only Western Conference team to win both games from the Cav’s. In fact they are the only team in the NBA to sweep the Cavs. Last year at Houston the… Read more »
Wiggins is about to get ejected for hitting Steven Adams in the face and pushing him while in the air.
Looks like he only got a flagrant 1.
Howard is playing better because he is healthy now,since his return from LA.Beverly is back, and proclaiming himself,best defensive player — Austin Carr
BTW the last time 2 teammates had triple-doubles in the same game was Vince Carter and Jason Kidd, for the Nets, in 2007.
LeBron kick him in the nuts!
Listening to Billups talk Cavs during half-time of the TWolves-OKC. His two concerns with the Cavs is that they run too much ISO, with LeBron and Kyrie, and that Kevin Love defense in the fourth quarter is a concern.
I would have to disagree with Billups if he’s referring to last night’s game. I thought KLOVE played decent defense and I thought Kyrie missed a lot of shots he would normally make and LBJ played well except for the TOs.
The biggest concern to me is their lack of scoring off the bench. The Spurs’ bench owned the Cavs’ bench because they have legitimate offensive threats in Ginobli, West, Diaw, and Mills whereas the Cavs have none except Mo but he’s injured.
The play they highlighted was when Love was switched onto Parker, and Parker just blew by him. To be fair, Parker was blowing by everyone.
HAHAHA!!! Exactly! That’s a terrible example to use to try and prove that point!
I think the Allstate commercial is effecting Love, it has effected me in a negative way. lol
I’m pretty sure it’s State Farm… so, bad marketing job by them!
HAHAHAHA!!!! Well done, EG… that was pretty funny!
Well played! I told you it effected me.
Good evening CtB! Your numbers for tonight:
CLE is a 1 point favorite over HOU with o/u @ 204.5. Smart money is on HOU and the UNDER.
I’m taking HOU 103-101 over CLE. Tough back to back along with a hot HOU team who will act like this is a playoff game.
EG is correct, betting trends are heavily against CLE in HOU as well as after nights they’ve failed to cover.
Look for rebounding to be the key to victory… HOU is not a good rebounding team, and CLE is the 7th ranked rebounding team.
Patrick Beverly aside… I think Kyrie will have a good night tonight…
HAHAHA… I like the phrase “Patrick Beverly aside…”!!! Sounds like some KI revenge may be served tonight? Didn’t think he played badly last night, but he wasn’t his normal transcendent self either.
I hope Harden has one of his signature plays where he takes a bad three, but kicks the defender in the nuts while doing so to ‘draw the foul’. That is spectacular and beautiful basketball.
HAHAHA… hey I think you forgot to use your sarcasm font!
Oh I almost forgot about that. That was against Lebron wasn’t it?
Most certainly was… and I don’t think he was given a technical for it as he should’ve.
“Revenge of the Nuts,” if I can say that here…
Here’s why I think the Cavs will win tonight…
“The Cavs will also be working against history in Friday’s matchup, as they’ve lost eight straight in Houston since a 104-102 overtime victory on March 26, 2006, and 23 of their last 26 there.”
Any word as to whether LBJ is playing or not?
Well, if he’s gonna play, I hope they win it…
I’d rather have a well rested Lebron against Golden State. The thing is he won’t just play 20 mins. If he plays, he goes all the way. TNT were discussing this about when Mavs rested. They countered why not just have them play reduced mins? That just doesn’t happen especially with Lebron. He’s all in or nothing. He wants this win under their belt.
It’ll be a high scoring game & not much defense at least from Rockets.
I think he’ll rest by getting others involved early, although he probably won’t have to work that hard against the Rockets’ D…
Good point. It might have been one of the reasons he wanted to play
They have 2 days off, he’ll be well rested.
LeBron agrees with me about last night’s game…
“Having 18 turnovers for 19 points against this team, who executes so well and don’t make many mistakes themselves, we’ve got to take care of the ball a little bit more,” James said.
I watched the game at work last night, but couldn’t play too close attention. I was watching it again this afternoon, and I think the Cavs really got out of their pace comfort zone in the 2nd qtr, and played a bit out of control. They had several bad turnovers this qtr. I will say that if the Spurs get that Tony Parker in the playoffs, I’m not sure anyone is going to beat them. The main reason that they lost to the Clippers last year was that Parker was very ineffective and injured. They got vintage Parker last night.… Read more »
I don’t think the points off of to’s are relevant at all. Interesting maybe, but the number of turnovers is what’s important. If you give up 15 point off 5 turnovers for the game that’s great imo. Bad luck they hit a 3 on every TO, but a great job handling the ball. OTOH if you have 20 turnovers and only give up 6 points that’s a pretty terrible job.
I guess I’m saying it’s all random and meaningless.
It’s relevant if the point disparity is 19 to 6 off of turnovers… Pretty much simple math my friend…
Even if you have lots of turnovers, if your opponent is not scoring because you’re not giving them easy run-out buckets on the other end… then it matters.
If a QB throws three picks, but his defense doesn’t allow the other team to score… isn’t that better than him throwing one pick six?
Well what about points scored off missed 3 point shots. Why are those points any less relevant than points scored off turnovers? Because it’s not listed in the boxscore?
By that logic, what about points scored off of missed shots in general? The point is, you at least had an opportunity to score with a shot (three point or otherwise), whereas with a turnover, you didn’t…
I’m sure if you ran the numbers, points off of turnovers would be from higher percentage, and less contested shots than points off of missed shots (three point or otherwise)…
On some this is prolly true. But a majority of to’s are deadball, like out of bounds and offensive fouls, and those are actually the hardest possessions to score off of, as this allows the defense to get set. I’d bet the point off to’s numbers a pretty similar to points off missed shots. My point is there are what, 100 possessions a game per team in NBA? I think giving the other teams unnecessary opportunities to score is the meaningful part, and the part you can more easily fix, not the randomness part on whether the shot they take… Read more »
Turnovers are much more important in football where you get a ton less possessions and they often flip field position, which is also much more important in football than basketball.
True, but the spirit of the comparison still applies… turnovers can be costly, or they can be minimized… it depends on what you do with them. The Spurs took advantage of the Cavaliers’ mistakes and scored 19 points from the 18 turnovers… the Cavs did not take advantage of the Spurs, scoring just 6 points on their 12 turnovers.
That is neither an insignificant, nor arbitrary statistic…
But when the Spurs gain possession off a deadball turnover say, it’s exactly the same as them taking it out of bounds off of a made FT. They don’t run anything different, or put any more emphasis on that play over the other. Same on D for the Cavs, they don’t bear down any harder. It’s just another random possession for the most part.
This kind of back and forth is what I love about this blog btw.
If you thought there were bad calls last night… steel yourself for this game…
I’m optimistic it is way better as long as we don’t have same refs. I don’t think Cavs get preferential treatment but no way the calls are lop-sided .
I just meant with the inevitable Harden drive and flails…
He is quite the actor. Maybe Lebron finds him a role in his show this summer.
That headbob is Harden’s move, and he does it better than anyone in the NBA. Hell, I don’t know if anyone besides him even tries it. The officials seem to instinctively blow the whistle when they see that, thinking that with any other player the bob of the head is the result of being fouled.
Serenity NOW! I wanted to scream when I saw the picture up top. He triggers something in me that makes me tad more angry than otherwise. GO Cavs. Either commit to win or sit to rest.
Anytime you want to curse at that that turd Harden for his flopping, just scream, “SERENITY NOW!!”