Recap: Cavs 93, Nuggets 87 (or de retour en noir)

A new year gives new hope that the problems of the past will soon be gone, and that a better days are on the horizon. Personal resolutions to live a better life are promised, but are often put on the back burner as new challenges replace the old. The Cavs 93-87 victory last night over the rebuilding Denver Nuggets was their last contest during 2015’s revolution around the sun, and what a year it was. At this point last season, the Cavs were stuck in the middle of a 2-10 rut that led to a self-maintenance sabbatical from LeBron, and a pair of trades for former Nuggets, which ultimately propelled the Cavs to a Finals appearance.

Denver and Cleveland may be 1,400 miles apart but the two franchises have been linked multiple times during modern NBA history. At the conclusion of the 2002-03 season where both teams bottomed out and converted on lottery luck to land franchise altering players a month and a half later. Both of those stars created hostile feelings with the teams who drafted them, but there’s probably not a clean way for a star to ever leave a team. I often wonder how things would have played out if the Nuggets had landed LeBron, and the Cavs drafted Melo. There would have been no decision, and no return. Would Melo have bolted the Forrest City at his first opportunity?

Last night’s game was a microcosm of 2015 for the team. There were good performances, and a big lead relinguished, but ultimately the good beads on the Cavaliers abacus outnumbered the bad,and the Cavs held on for the victory despite Will Barton’s 29 points for the injury depleted Nuggets. At the conclusion of the game, LeBron James reached another year accrued and celebrated the bridge to his 31st year with a 34 point performance in 34 minutes, that included a return to his outside shot.

Boo

For as great as LeBron’s performance was on offense, he was lazy on defense for much of the night, and posted a pedestrian +3 plus/minus, and led the team with five turnovers.

During a break in the action, the camera cut to former Cavaliers heel Carlos Boozer and his young son Cayden near the Cavs bench. Fred McLeod warming summarized Boozer’s attendance being a sabbatical from a family ski trip in Colorado. Personally, I find Boozer being black balled completely justifiable for him lying to a blind man, using shoe polish to cover his bald spot, and being terrible at basketball for the last five years of his career.

The Cavs shooting woos from downtown returned and they converted on just four of their 22 three pointers. The team was also out rebounded again 52-44 and they posted a mediocre 1.4 assist to turnover ratio, but a win is a win.

Yay

When LeBron’s got that 15-footer going, the rest of his game falls into place. -Austin Carr

LeBron’s jumper had a crispness on the nylon that has no longer become the norm. The left lean to his jumper didn’t surface, and he went straight up with his shot and the results were spectacular. During last years playoffs many of us questioned how much more dominant this team could be if LeBron still had the threat from downtown to keep the defense honest. Rather than dwell on the past, lets give him his due for the present, and hope that the leveled jumper he displayed last night is a foreshadowing of things to come in the new year. His outside barrage was on full display during the first half as he put up the Cavs up 15 late in the second quarter before taking a pre-intermission breather. He gained confidence with each successive shot, sizing up his defender, and letting his man pick his poison according to his defensive positioning.

LeBron is turning 31 today. It doesn't appear to have any effect on his hops. https://t.co/1hKCnNzvTf

— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) December 30, 2015

In spite of the 31 years of miles he’s accrued on his legs, LeBron showed that he still has lift and acceleration that few in the league can match with a highlight show of transition dunks in the second half. While apex athleticism LeBron is gone, he’s still has more juice than the majority of the league.

My favorite play of the night from him was neither an outside dagger, nor a breakaway slam. Midway through the second quarter, Iman Shumpert stole an errant Will Barton pass, and Shump couldn’t achieve enough balance to finish at the rim, but the Cavs still converted on the scored board as LeBron had a chase down put back off of Shumpert’s weak finish. For all of the justifiable criticism we lob LeBron’s way for his “chill mode” moments, I love seeing him hustle.

https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/status/682045371443363840

Iman Shumpert put up his best offensive game of the season with 16 points on 2 of 5 shooting from downtown, and seems to be settling into his role on offense. During our preseason preview of the team, Shumpman was chosen by multiple members of C:tB to be the Cavalier to show the most growth during this campaign, and in spite of a wrist injury that sidelined him for the first 21 games, he can still attain that superlative. Shump aggressively played the Denver passing lanes, and those take aways led to Cavalier fast break points on the other end of the court. At the conclusion of the first half, he had a foot race with Barton to the hoop as time expired and he beat the buzzer by .03 of a second.

Delly’s floater/lob finally has a name thanks to Tom Pestak’s coining of the weapon as the Drain/Flush near the end of last night’s Live Thread. Delly pulled it out multiple times against the Nuggets and his Drain on drive in the second worked to perfection as Kenneth Faried played the Flush, sticking on Thompson as Delly laid it up for two. It was Delly’s only conversion from the field, but he still filled the stat sheet with seven boards, five assists and a pair of steals. In a related story, I ordered a Delly shersey as a gift to myself for the holidays. There’s a wide selection of them available on Cavs.com.

KEVIN LOVE. #NBAVote#CavsNuggets on @FOXSportsOHhttps://t.co/gZxta7HDmD

— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) December 30, 2015

Kevin Love joined Delly, as a player who found a way to affect the game, even though he couldn’t find his shot. Love was puke from the field tallying eight points on 16 shots, but he chipped in 14 rebounds, a pair of steals of his own, and paced the team along with Delly for a +16 in 36 minutes. Perhaps the thumb stinger Love suffered the previous night against the Suns contributed to his poor shooting performance.

Closing

I can’t for the life of me understand NBA scheduling that the Commodore 64 spits out. The Cavs were pitted with a four games in five nights road trip during the holidays. I get that they want to get the marquee teams playing while the majority of American eyeballs are on holiday leave to boost ratings, but that was a brutal tour of the left coast. As bad as it started with the loses to the Warriors and Blazers, the team ended up splitting the trip and now have three days off until they take on the Magic for their first game of 2016. This team isn’t close to their potential, and as Tom Pestak pointed out a few days ago, they are ahead of schedule. For all of the worry we’ve flashed during the first trimester of the season, they are comfortably in first place in the conference, and for the first time in nearly a decade the leagues focus isn’t bearing down up LeBron’s massive shoulders. I like that they aren’t the it team, and that they are flying under the radar as we head into 2016.