Playoff Live Thread: Cavs vs. Celtics (#FlipTheGlitch)

After 10 straight playoff wins (13 straight if you count the Finals), many of the convincing variety… the Cavs finally, and unexpectedly, ran into their first glitch in the post season on Sunday. Yet, it wasn’t so much that they lost that was bothersome… but rather how they lost. Blowing a 21 point third quarter lead to an inferior and undermanned opponent, as they coasted to the finish line, was enough to make the average Cavs fan quote Keanu… “Whoa. Deja vu.” For the first time since the regular season, the Cavs seemed to replicate a bad habit of building large leads only to let them slip away as they took their collective foot off the gas. You only have to go back as far as the final week of the season to recall the historic 26 point choke job the wine and gold pulled against the Atlanta Hawks.

Still, this setback was a little different. Mainly because LeBron James reminded us that even he can be human some days. LBJ had a most un-Kingly 11 points (breaking his streak of 30+ scoring games), on just 4-13 shooting (0-4 from deep). He had just as many turnovers (six) as he had rebounds and assists, and generally seemed off of his game for most of the night. Other Cavs weren’t, as Kyrie, Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson all had terrific performances that should have been enough to put the team in the win column, even with their leader’s rare below average game.

This is not to overstate either the importance of the loss, or to suggest that things didn’t have to break exactly right for the Celtics to steal Game 3. After all, Marcus Smart arguably had the game of his life filling in for the injured Isaiah Thomas. An abjectly terrible career three point shooter, Smart scored 27 points… with all but two of them coming either on made threes (7-10) or free throws after being fouled beyond the arc twice. That’s unlikely a sustainable occurrence. Likewise, Boston got incredible production out of both Kelly Olynyk (15 points on 5-8 shooting in 23 minutes) and seldom used forward Jonas Jerebko (10 points on a perfect 4-4 shooting in 13 minutes). And, they also got a tremendously fortunate bounce on Avery Bradley’s game winning three… not just because it went in, but also that it took so long to do so that it left the Cavs without even a second on the clock for a retort.

If the Cavs want to avoid seeing the black cat cross a second time in Game 4, they’ll have to flip the glitch by embracing the same mentality they had when they flipped the switch to start the post season. It starts and ends with defensive intensity. LeBron’s bad game aside, the Cavs played with noticeably less hustle on their traps and switches in Game 3 as they had in the previous two against the Celtics. Maybe they were overconfident… maybe they thought Boston would just roll over and die without their star PG… or maybe the Cavs just didn’t properly game plan given the Celtics no longer had to play 4-0n-5 themselves on defense. Whatever the reason, expect the Cavs to bounce back in Game 4… and for LeBron to channel his anger towards everyone who pissed him off on Sunday into a stellar performance.

Prediction: LeBron goes full Neo, and does his Superman thing, en route to helping the Cavs fix the glitch in their Matrix, and take down the Celtics 124-98.

Catch all the action on TNT starting at 8:30pm (EST), and don’t forget to share your opinions here…