Links to the Present: “A Christmas MiraCLE” Edition

2016-12-24 Off By Briana Contreras

With two close wins against the Milwaukee Bucks this week, the Cleveland Cavaliers faced their share of highs and lows on the road to their Christmas Day game against The Golden State Warriors.

While beating the Bucks in overtime 114-108 on Tuesday and 113-102 this past Wednesday, LeBron James is continuing his journey movin’ on up on the NBA all-time scorers list.

After just passing Elvin Hayes for ninth place, James reached eighth on Tuesday night in Milwaukee, reaching his NBA career high passing the late Moses Malone for an overall 27,490 after last night’s 119-99 win against The Brooklyn Nets.

LeBron needs to score over 1,080 point to pass Shaquille O’Neal, and according to USA Today, he should pass this season as long as James averages at least 25 points per game.

That seems pretty possible.

Although the Cavs are on a proud four-game winning streak, they managed to hit a major bump in the road and maybe some very minor ones too.

Minor being..

https://vine.co/v/52LZz5hu3zt

And

https://vine.co/v/52LjaguEm1X

This isn’t the worst, but you have to admit these are some pretty nasty spankings made by Bucks rookie Malcolm Brogdon.

Now the Cavs have a major spanking to deal with in J.R. Smith.

If it’s not his ankle, it’s his knee and if it’s not his knee, it’s his thumb.

During the first game against the Bucks, J.R. injured his thumb and was taken out. He went through a procedure that was speculated to only have a four to six week vacation time, but after the surgery it’s now expected to take 12-14 weeks. This will last until March so hopefully we can have someone like Liggins or Shumpert hold his spot in lineup until then.

This may be a rough patch for the Cavaliers, but this is exactly what our bench is for – referring back to my post last week.

According to Sportingnews.com..

“It’s tough when you lose guys who mean so much to the success of our team,” James told reporters. “Obviously it’s going to be a while until we get J.R. back so it’s next man up and guys have to fill in. Guys have to fill in and play their role and not play J.R.’s role, you can’t. J.R. is a special talent so you don’t try to play his role. You just try to do more of your role and try to help the team win. So hopefully we can get that.”

The boys did pretty well without him last night to take their win, so hopefully it wont hurt too much!

In other links..

The Cavaliers will face off in their first game of the season against the Warriors.

Although the Cavs are missing a key asset to the team in J.R., there is still The Big Three to potentially do some damage alongside the rest of the team in a second year holiday rematch.

Tim Bielik with Cleveland.com, believes that the Cavaliers will blow out the Warriors for three reasons.

Reasons such as..

1.) It has happened three times already.

2.) Third road game for Warriors in four days.

3.) Cavs have a whole new Kevin Love.

Tim has some good points because each loss the Warriors have had has been a blowout. If those teams can do it, the NBA Champions can certainly do that too. Hopefully without J.R.

Having a long stretch in road games can definitely be detrimental to a team’s performance so with them playing away the Cavaliers can have that advantage easily.

Lastly, Kevin Love has certainly sprouted to become the beautiful three-point shooter he is this season, averaging in about 18 points a game.

Other than J.R.’s time off, the Cavs have to keep this momentum going, dance right into Christmas Day and get that W like..

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOVeQEcD29p/

Because I know I’ll be.