Live Thread: Cavs @ Heat
2015-03-16
Tonight, the Cleveland Cavaliers are taking their talents to South Beach for the second time this season, though LeBron is a “maybe.” After tweaking his knee against the Magic last night, LeBron received treatment today, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if David Blatt rests him. It wouldn’t be a bad time to tune up the K-Love/Kyrie two man game, and I’m quite sure the Heat hope the King’s a scratch. Miami is currently a half game out of the playoffs behind Charlotte and tied with the suddenly hot Celtics. They’re 5-5 in their last ten, and are only hanging around because Dwyane Wade has been off the charts lately, averaging 29, 4.8 assists, and 3.5 boards with 53%/40%/82% shooting splits in his last four games.
The Heat have been seriously banged up, and have been forced to start Henry Walker (formerly Billy, formerly Bill, formerly William) at forward. Miami’s also seen Hassan Whiteside’s dark side, as a recent flagrant foul against Kelly Olynyk drew a suspension for Hassan. Still, I wouldn’t sleep on this Heat team. They’re desperately fighting to make the second season, and they’re always jonesing for a chance to punk the Cavs. D-Wade and Dragic have been Cavs killers in the past. Stopping those two and smart play by Mozzy to keep Whiteside off the O-boards and to counter his physicality will be key. I’m betting this one’s chippy. Wear your mouth guard and your scowl, Perk. Let’s go Cavs.
damn that sucks
evil thank you for that valuable stat / do wade/ spoestra know something about LeBron ( his kryptonite ) being around him during those 4 yrs and how to exploit them / play against him—-yes come playoff time the defense is going to be ” turned up volumes ” cavs better be ready to react to it
I’m usually pretty calm about games like this, but Cavs were horrible tonight. Unprepared, bad effort, and so sick of the LBJ weirdness when playing the Heat. Interesting comment from Chris Fedor on the Ken Carman Show (listened to it on the way home), that the common denominator in all of the Cavs losses since the turnaround when LBJ came back from rest is that they’ve been against teams with top 10 defenses. The defensive intensity is going to go way up in the playoffs and the Cavs need to have a better answer than all ISO all the time… Read more »
Very Telling stat. Indiana and Miami are both good defenses and likely round one foes.
Eh. Meaningless game. You could tell the cavs didn’t care. Im glad they realize they don’t need to win every game and bring playoff intensity until the playoffs.
How many games would it take to defeat Miami in the playoffs Cols?
If it was such a meaningless game, then why did LBJ play 35 minutes including 9 minutes of the meaningless fourth quarter? Why play at all on a back to back after his knee scare? Why not just sit him and Kyrie if it’s so meaningless?
Ouch. I was out, so maybe not going to watch this one…
Heat really needed this and Cavs were done from the trip and last night. I think this is LBJ’s way of dealing with DWade — just to let them have it when it doesn’t really matter.
Very real possibility we will meet in the first round. Yikes. Ah, well. No worries.
Cols comment tomorrow – we just finished a four game road trip on a back to back. We would destroy this team in the playoffs in 4 games.
This type of game against a good defensive team like the Heat shows how bad the Cavs need K Love. The spacing with him helps Kyrie’s and LeBron’s drives to the basket and his rebounding was really missed tonight.