Recap: New Orleans 116, Cleveland 82 (or, Pelican Droppings)

As the tide of this game started to turn against Cleveland at the end of the first quarter, Cavs backup center JaVale McGee took matters into his own hands. Dribbling and surveying the floor, McGee saw a few feet of daylight — and the three-point line — between his youthful defender, the 20-year old suburban Cincinnatian, Jaxson Hayes. Although there were 15 seconds left on the shot clock and two of the Cavs’ bona fide long-distance specialists were on the floor and wide open, JaVale launched a trey which thunked off of the glass. For Dylan Windler, it was another day at the office, running back on defense. Kevin Love, open on the weak side, started running back the second the shot left McGee’s hand, leaving small puffs of “what the hell” energy in his wake.

In his ten minutes of action in this game, Love managed to get off four shots (he made a single three), and defrauded Zion Williamson into a couple of foul shots. In spite of his momentary triumph over the Pelicans young star, Love was generally frustrated, outpaced and outjumped by Zion on the defensive end.

Somehow the Cavs managed to keep this game close in the first quarter, in spite of Brandon Ingram dropping long bomb after long bomb over their heads. But the departure of Kevin Love, and JaVale’s improvisation with about one minute left in the first quarter marked the end of the good times in the Big Easy.

On the whole the Pelicans’ bigs seemed to get the best of the Cavs, and Jarrett Allen did not have a good game, going 2-6 from the field and a team-worst +/- of -33 (not a misprint). The Pelicans’ backup center Jaxson Hayes had a burst of scoring in the pivotal minutes where New Orleans was opening up an 11 point lead in the second quarter, smashing over Dotson and looking like a dominant player following in the footsteps of Tristan Thompson (in that he was drafted after one year at the University of Texas at Austin, but hailing from Moeller High School in Ohio’s own Hamilton county instead of Canada). Steven Adams went 5-5 in this game, harnessing 14 defensive rebounds on his way to 17 overall boards.

The Cavs’ role players simply could not put the ball in the basket in this game. Dotson, Okoro, Osman, Wade (known collectively for purposes of this exercise as “DOOW”) went a combined 2-25.

Apart from the (as it was to turn out, temporary) return of Kevin Love, the only other real silver lining in this game was the arrival of Quinn Cook for relief at the point guard position; although the majority of it was in the extended garbage time that was the second half, Cook got over 16 minutes of run, went 3-4 from distance, grabbed 4 rebounds, and ended with 13 points. Does it need to be stated that this is an improvement on the two-game Yogi Ferrell experiment? J.B. praised his “poise and experience, and ability to make shots” in his postgame. Larry Nance, Jr. also got back into the rotation in this game, going 28 minutes and shooting 2-4 from three-point range.

But on the whole the Cavs got completely blitzed by the Pelicans. Ingram ended up with 28 points. Nickeil Alexander-Walker, a guard who was the 17th pick overall in the 2019 NBA draft, continued on his post-Miami mini-breakout with 15 points on 13 shots. Lonzo Ball made a single shot in this game, and Eric Bledsoe came up empty, but it didn’t matter.

After the game, JB could at least talk about how good it was to be back to full strength, or the semblance of full strength, excusing the loss with that, in a rough paraphrase, “there was a lot going on, bringing in new players, bringing back injured players, having had only one day of practice, a lot of rust…but we have to bring the grit” etc. For his part, Stan Van Gundy could take a break from berating his team. Two teams that entered this contest more or less equal in the win-loss column would move in opposite directions — the Cavs would go on to Atlanta, where a fourth-quarter collapse awaited, and the Pelicans would go on to thrash the Los Angeles Clippers, 135-115.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUPNdmjJ_eI