Recap: Cavs 87, Sixers 86 (or, Ugliest Win of the Season?)

Wow… that was Furkan hard to watch!

There were potentially three reasons to tear yourself away from March Madness to witness this late-season contest between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers…

1) To see if the Cavs would snag their 16th straight home victory

2) To see if LeBron James would pass Patrick Ewing to crack the top 20 NBA scorers of all time

3) To see who would win the battle of the flat-tops… Nerlens Noel or Iman Shumpert

Unfortunately, the pain of watching what deteriorated into a brickfest for the ages pitched defensive struggle for much of the second half, made it difficult to stay tuned for the full 48 minutes (unless you’re a fan of train wrecks and Turkish rookie Centers…).

In what could win the award for “Ugliest Win of the Season,” the Cavs were able to keep their home win streak alive, primarily because the Sixers kept refusing to accept their generous offers to end it. And for a while, not even KLove bobble-head night seemed like it could prevent the Cavs or the sellout crowd in attendance from nodding off into oblivion.

Here’s how it all went down…

First Quarter:

David Blatt, determined to grab that second seed in the East (and with three days off until the next game, which happens to be against likely first round matchup Miami), declared no rest for his starting five so all the regular starters were in from the tip. Brett Brown threw in a wrinkle of his own though at the start, inserting seldom used rookie Furkan Aldemir at Center, sliding Nerlens Noel into the PF spot to match up with Kevin Love. But right away, the Cavs tested the match-up, going inside to KLove for a quick two and drawing a foul on Noel, showing he did not “fear the flat top.” But Furkan came right back with a put-back off a missed jumper.

After Robert Covington made the first of his five threes in transition, Kyrie made a magical move and hit JR for an uncontested triple. Then Nerlens and LBJ decided to have a mini dunk off, trading flat-top oops with brute force driving jams. Although Noel doesn’t dunk the ball so much as toss it gently down through the cylinder from a great height. And even though he’s just a 30% shooter outside of three feet, he did sink a decent 14-footer before Bron fired back with a corner three.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59iruOpinfU

Ish Smith, who’d been hot lately, started doing his best Jeff Teague impression, but Kyrie said “I’ll see your Teague and raise you a CP3” with a pull-up mid-ranger to put the Cavs up three. Out of a timeout though, the Sixers went on a 7-0 run with another Covington transition trey and more of Ish pushing the ball (they kept running even after made baskets to a tune of 10 fast break points in the first). The Cavs tried to get the ball inside to KLove a few times, but he had it poked away twice. It took an epic Moz dunk to wake the Cavs up. Then, while Luc Richard Mbah a Moute decided to showcase his inability to make threes, Shump demonstrated the opposite to help end the quarter on a 10-0 run. Cavs led 26-20.

Second Quarter:

Since the deadline deals, there’s more than a couple of guys on the Sixers bench whose identities might only be familiar to hard-core enthusiasts and fantasy junkies. JaKarr Sampson (he’s actually from Cleveland) decided to make himself known with a dunk to open the quarter. LBJ got to the rack for a couple freebies, and then the Delly/TT high wire act took over for a few minutes. Somehow TT threw the hammer down nearly sideways on oop after what looked like a foul, then Delly found him in traffic for another cleaner one (they’ve started to get really good timing on that).

After Hollis Thompson (another fresh faced Sixer) hit a three, LBJ returned the favor and jabbered at him on way back down the floor. They traded buckets again (LeISO was in full-effect… and working for the moment), until JaKarr Sampson hit a transition three to cut the Cavs lead to two. At this point, defense was mostly a rumor as the Cavs were just content trading baskets with the Sixers. But out of a timeout, KLove and Moz pulled a perfect two-man game that ended with a KLove three bomb. Kyrie made a slick steal and fired it to Shump for free throws. Shump then got a steal of his own, however, when he rose up for the breakaway dunk try… he came up short (for the third time this season) and got blocked by the rim. Shortly thereafter, Shump checked out of the game and wouldn’t return due to a sore ankle that he tweaked on the dunk fail.

https://vine.co/v/OLMdK7Qd5mz

Furkan scored a quick layup but then Kyrie triggered an eight point Moz-otov cocktail explosion with a thunderous high handoff. It continued with a terrific LBJ no-look pass to Moz for another easy transition bucket to put the Cavs back up by 11. Unfortunately, Ish Smith somehow snuck in an and-one layup as Philly wasted no time running after Cavs made basket. Then another one (where in the name of Sam Hinkie’s spreadsheets did this guy come from?) to close it back to eight. LBJ couldn’t hit the runner at the end of the half, but he was still halfway to passing Pat Ewing (11 points). Cavs turned up the D a little and still held the Sixers to 41% shooting, but gave up some points in the paint. Cavs up at the half 53-45.

Third Quarter:

The quarter began with a Furkan takeover. Aldemir racked up a couple of offensive boards and six quick points to help close the differential. Only an LBJ inbounds layup off a Kyrie assist slowed the comeback before Covington tied it up with another transitional triple. Out of a timeout, the Cavs got serious about defense again and over the next four minutes, forced the Sixers into a series of ill-fated three point attempts (even a Furkan one). On the flip side, both Kyrie and KLove hit bombs from beyond the perimeter to push the lead back out to six.

Hacky-sack anyone?

This should have been the part of the game where the Cavs took full advantage of an inferior opponent and put some distance between themselves and Sam’s Club, but instead they opted for an extended turnover binge. There were two each from Kyrie, the Matrix and LBJ (including one where Bron just appeared to let the ball slip out of bounds and then proceeded to play hacky-sack with it). One led to a Noel gentle throw down… another to a Covington three.

Kyrie went into attack mode late in the quarter, getting a couple of tough layups inside and a few trips to the stripe, but JaKarr Sampson had a four point flourish to close the scoring and pull Philly back to within three after three, and Isaiah Canaan almost rattled in a desperation heave to tie it up at the buzzer. The Cavs wound up with more turnovers (seven) than baskets (six) this quarter, but still found themselves up 72-69.

Fourth Quarter:

[Editor’s note: My laptop died as I was writing up my notes on the fourth quarter, and I lost most of what I wrote about it. Faced with the prospect of having to endure the pain of watching the entire fourth quarter over again, I opted to instead hit a couple of highlights and let the commentariat fill in the blanks…]

11:41: Isaiah Canaan picked up where he left off and hit a three to tie things up.

10:42: The Matrix actually DUNKED a basketball for the first time in forever…

Phil Hubbard said “Good to see Marion getting some playing time. Got to prep him for the playoffs.”

8:00: LeBron made his last bucket of the game to put him one point behind Patrick Ewing for #20 on the all time scoring list (he went 0-5 the rest of the way, and just 8-24 on the night).

(Moz actually started the fourth and came up with some big rebounds. KLove also checked in at 8:56… unfortunately, not for long…)

Squeaky back not included.

6:58: On a weird sequence, KLove awkwardly reached for a pass from Kyrie… then walked off the floor and straight into the locker room. It would be reported that he got elbowed in the lower back and would not return for the rest of the game.

believeLAND said: “That was the oddest play I have seen all year. What’s going on?”

Phil Hubbard said: “Uh-oh. Love is listing to starboard and heading back to port (the locker room). Could be the back acting up.”

NOMAD said: “did LOVE’S BOBBLEHEAD come with a squeak/crack in his back?”

5:31: JR made a HUGE three off of an LBJ block, Moz board and LBJ assist in transition.

I said: “That was a great board by Moz and showed why it’s a good thing to have him in late in games…”

4:03: Moz grabbed another HUGE offensive board and put it up and in for a four point lead.

3:57: Robert Covington hit his fifth and final three in transition. This would finish the scoring FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

That’s a lot of bricks…

Neither team scored for the final 3:57 of the game. Both teams shot 28% from the floor in the fourth quarter. The Sixers shot 4-10 from line and Cavs didn’t even get there once.

OSUBuck42 said: “How many times has PHI had the ball with a chance to take the lead in the second half and failed. At least 15-20 right?”

Gordon said: “Kyrie and LeBron a combined 10 assists, and 10 turnovers. That’s just ugly basketball.”

JB225 said: “That was the ugliest, weirdest and less deserved win of the year. Hope they bring more effort against the Heat next game.”

While it may go down as the ugliest win of the season, the Cavs wound up extending their home winning streak to 16 games with an 87-86 victory.

The Evil:

While I could easily pile on the Cavs for their effort (for the second time in two games against inferior opponents), the easy excuse is that it’s probably tough to get up and motivated for games like these as they wait for the much greater challenge of the looming playoff run. That said, there’s also something to be said for practicing efficient, winning basketball on lesser teams, resting your starters (if only for a quarter or so) and getting reps in for your bench.

Though I admire Blatt’s tenacity for wanting to ensure they lock up the second seed, it won’t mean anything if somebody important goes down with an injury in a game like this. From the sounds of it, both the lower back injury for KLove and the ankle injury for Shump are fairly minor, but why take too many unnecessary risks on that front?

The Cavs seemed really disjointed on offense this game. While they seemed to be moving the ball well enough, they were just either not getting good looks, or having tough luck on the few higher percentage shots they did take. LBJ and Kyrie both were guilty of reverting to too much ISO in the final quarter to try and enforce their will, but they clearly underestimated the Sixers’ length and tenacity. The Sixers should actually get a lot of credit for the defense they’ve played in second halves this season. They sneakily have the best second-half defense in the league in terms of points per possession.

The Cavs’ defense wasn’t bad, and in fact they were able to clamp down on Philly for long stretches this game. But the Sixers missed a ton of open shots in the fourth quarter, including a couple of threes that would have made life very difficult for the Cavs. Neither team executed well in the abysmal fourth quarter.

The turnovers were also a noticeable problem this game. As mentioned, LBJ and Kyrie combined for 10 turnovers and 10 assists… not a particularly favorable ratio. Overall, they turned it over 17 times. A better offensive team than the Sixers would have made them pay more dearly for these miscues.

The Genius:

Even though saying that this game “wasn’t pretty” is a tremendous understatement… it was still a win in the end. A win that will count toward salting away the second seed in the EC.

KLove and Shump’s injuries don’t sound too severe. Let’s hope that bears out in the morning. At the very least, the Cavs have two days off before a day of practice to get ready for Miami.

Moz and KLove actually played in the fourth quarter! While Kevin’s stay was abbreviated by his untimely injury, Moz was a huge factor on both the defensive end and the glass. Kevin also still was able to get his double-double despite the injury.

The original high top fade…

Though both LeBron and Kyrie struggled with off games, they still did enough to squeak this one out. Neither was particularly efficient, but still wound up with decent numbers (20/11/6 for LBJ; 17 and 4 with two steals for Kyrie). LBJ did fall short of passing big Pat… but he’ll probably do it in the first two minutes against the Heat…

Shump was actually having a pretty good night before going out with his ankle issue. He was 2-2 from deep with nine points and three steals in just 11 minutes of play. Unfortunately, since he missed the second half, his flat top battle with Nerlens went incomplete…

Final Thought:

They can’t all be pretty, so at least the Cavs had enough in the tank to pull this one out. Interesting game coming up next vs. the Heat. Cavs probably need to win to show themselves they can handle Miami with no problem… but will a victory essentially insure that they face the Heat in the first round?