Recap: Cleveland 136, Golden State 117 (or, “I Did Not Come to Play…”)

If you’ve watched the Cavs’ the last few years under J.B. Bickerstaff, you might recognize a song that played on Cavalier fashion commercials a few seasons ago, Derek Minor’s Dominate. My buddy Eric’s kid was three at the time and just ran around the house slinging “I did not come to play / I came to dominate… dominate” all day long… I’m doing that this morning, walking around downtown Nashville, and thinking of the Cavs looking like the class of the association. As good as Cleveland was on offense in the first, they were absolutely humming on both sides of the ball in the second. Cleveland shot 64% from deep and dished 22 assists in the first half! The Cavs need to bring back Derek Minor’s opus after their most emphatic beatdown of the season: an 83-42 first half annihilation of the hated Golden State Warriors that made the second half academic.

First Quarter:

The Dubs came in 8-1 with the best point differential in the association, +15.7. But to paraphrase Austin Carr, “If you have a defensive lapse for a few minutes against this Cavs team, they will absolutely make you pay.” The Cavs did not come to play, and jumped on the Dubs who were looking to ease into the game. Cleveland forced turnovers, jumped the passing lanes, and used the pace and space of the offense that Kenny Atkinson brought with him from the Bay to blow the doors off the Warriors from the jump. They raced out to an 18 point lead by midway through the first. They spun red hot flaming basketballs at the rim, going 7-10 from downtown in the first quarter, with no one dominating the ball, and the rocking finding the open man again and again.

Cleveland used an inside/out game to unleash the Darius and Mobley show as Garland got it started off a slick pass through two defenders to find Evan cutting baseline to draw two freebies. The Cavalanche snowballed from there with six different Cavs hitting a triple in the first frame. In fact, only Jarrett Allen failed to attempt a three, and Mobley led the scoring with eight in the quarter despite going 0-2 from deep.

A lot of excuse makers came out of the woodwork for the Warriors, pointing out that this ways their fourth game in a five-games-in-eight days road trip, but lets be crystal clear. The schedule gods have given these guys zero back-to-backs this week. Maybe they were looking ahead to the Thunder on Monday, but the Dubs had zero juice to start this one. Okoro spent a lot of time covering Steph and Dray, and as good as the Cavs were on offense, they were locked in on D. Cleveland led 20-2 before Andrew Wiggins dropped a triple to staunch the bleeding, and then closed the quarter up 39-22.

Second Quarter:

Isaac Okoro may have a hold on a spot in the starting lineup with his recent play. He and Ty Jerome absolutely cooked Steph and Co. in the second, going +23 in 10 minutes. The pair helped the wine and gold force nine Golden State turnovers in the quarter, out-rebound them 13-5, and almost everything Cleveland put up rim went in. The pair led the Cavs with 13 points for Ty and eight for Ice. There was a lot of team rebounding, where the ball got batted around through multiple efforts before a good-guy secured the loose ball, and everyone in this ten-man rotation was playing for each other.

Super-sub Caris LeVert brought the D with a scintillating all-around quarter with 3/2/2 in just under six minutes, and the Cavs’ closed the first 24 with Garland leading the way. In the last five minutes Darius notched assists four, five, and six, with an exclamation point skip pass to Caris putting the Cavs up 40 points as the shot clock expired at the 2:30 mark. Then DG dropped the next four with a freebie, a 14-footer, and a layup off a Caris steal to close the scoring before Andrew Wiggins ate the whole shot clock up and ended the frame with a whimpering 18-foot clanker as the wine and gold went into the locker room 83-42. Good lord.

Second Half

Brandin Podziemski provided the entertainment, sporting crazy hair, a plastic shield on his face, and playing and looking like a more spastic younger cousin of Will Farrell in Semi Pro. He led the Dubs with 11/5/2 and +18 in consolation tome. As Jason pointed out in the live thread, Cleveland played at three-quarter speed in the second half, with tonight’s back-to-back against Brooklyn looming. Evan Mobley used the time as offense practice, with a wild-ass amount of usage to drop 12 points, and Donovan played on cruise control going just 2-9 with three turnovers.

Podziemski made iit ever-so-slightly interesting as he cut the Cavs’ lead to 18 with six minutes left, before Darius Garland took over and scored eight straight points in a minute (16 second half points) to push the lead back over 30 and bring in the zoo crew.

How are the Cavs’ doing this? Well, they’re only playing one guy who doesn’t shoot threes. (And I’m challenging you to unleash the three-ball Jarrett Allen!) And everyone has the green light to shoot when open. The Cavs’ drive-and-kick-and-drive-and kick ad nauseum, with ball screens, pin downs, and weak side side cuts when the defenders’ turn their backs on the corner. Darius Garland has been phenomenal operating with all the space, as his forays into the paint give him multiple options to drive to the rim, float, nash the baseline to look for cutters, or hit the best dive men in the association on lobs.

Oh, and having a fresh, hot-shooting, utility knives like Caris, Ty, and Dean Wade off the bench doesn’t hurt, either. The Cavs are super-duper switchy right now, unafraid to let teams match-up hunt on Garland or Merrill, which just leans to teams pounding the rock while Cleveland runs them int to the ground. As (I think) Mrsteal rightly pointed out in the LT a couple games ago, the Cavs depth and their back-line defense, allows everyone to play super aggressive and ball-hawk defensively, which turns defensive mismatches into opportunities when the switches force bigger players to operate in space against Cleveland’s rangy guards. It also helps that Georges Niang isn’t a corpulent blob of goo on legs this year. His conditioning and athleticism seems much improved (as does everyone’s with this much space to operate).

Hell, Donovan Mitchell, who operated as the Cavs’ iso-closer Wednesday barely had to break a sweat in this one. When defenders stay at home, Mitchell has all the room in the world to operate, but he didn’t need it tonight. Meanwhile, Cleveland hounded Steph into six turnovers. While I give Cleveland all the credit in the world, they definitely didn’t get the Warriors’ best. But keep bringing that weak-ass shit into the Rock, National Basketball Association, cause the Cavaliers did not come to play… They came to