Recap: Cavs 100, Knicks 91 (Or, The Knicks Are Just relaxing)
2009-11-06
Overview: After a dominant 40-21 first quarter, the Cavaliers cruised to a victory in a game much less competitive than the final score would indicate.
Cavs-Related Bullets:
Well, that was easy. I don’t know what it is about The Garden, but LeBron came out and put the Knicks away right out of the gate. I don’t think LeBron has taken as many bad shots combined over the rest of the season as he did tonight, but he was making absolutely everything. It was freakish. And when he wasn’t hitting a jumper, he was making a beautiful home-run pass. Normally, LeBron going for jumpers early in the game kills the offensive flow, even when he’s making them, but tonight he was so dominant in the first quarter the rest of the game hardly mattered.
After the first quarter, the game was over, and the Cavs played like it. Too many bad shots, very few well-executed sets, lots of sloppy play leading to turnovers. Didn’t really matter. It still hasn’t fully sunk in that the Cavs were playing an NBA team tonight. This Knicks team is one of the worst teams I’ve ever seen play in the NBA. It’s hard to even give out praise in this one-it honestly felt like a Globetrotter game.
+19 for Zydrunas Ilgauskas and +15 for Delonte West, despite the fact neither of them had great shooting nights-the lineup that won 66 games works. Who would’ve thunk it?
Hickson as a show starter-interesting. He had some nice plays, and Andy sure did look fantastic coming off the bench. We’ll see if MB plans to stick with this plan against a real defense and evaluate it then.
Only 19 minutes for Shaq, and no “twin towers” tonight. MB playing matchups. Again, was this rocket science?
That’s honestly all I really have for now. In all seriousness, this Knicks team is so bad it’s hard to draw real conclusions. The Cavs weren’t even running real sets, and they had their easiest game of the year. Happy weekend, all.
There’s a fundamental problem here: the Cavs aren’t taking games seriously, and when they do, they say – well, we need more time to learn how to play together and to gel. There was no excuse for treating the pre-season like they did (the starters hardly played at all). And they are treating games like this one, against the Knicks – like they treated the pre-season game. The Cavs should have been working on ball movement, on getting good looks, etc – every possession – whether its a playoff game versus the Magic, or an early season game against the… Read more »
Thoughts from the game: – Jamario Moon missed a three from the corner and hesitated the next time he got one there even though he was wide open. Mr. Moon needs to watch some Sasha Pavlovic video and realize that on this Cavs team, when you’re open in the corner, Mike Brown wants you to shoot it even if you missed your last three shots. Moon needs to spread the floor and shoot open threes to the best of his ability with no regard for what happened last time. The mere threat of it spaces the floor well. Guys who… Read more »
I just rewatched this game on ESPN360 and well, it wasn’t much of a game after the first quarter. Yeah, the Knicks “fought” their way back in, but with the Cavs on the second night of a back to back and the Knicks down by 20 and with only a few guys on the team expecting to be a long-term part of the team, it kinda dragged. So I had time to think about other stuff… There are many, many reasons why it’d be against Lebron’s interests to leave Cleveland next summer. He’s already on a perennial contender built to… Read more »
I was there, and let’s just say it is scary how much the Knick fans love Lebron.
-I propose Boobie’s new nickname should be Zombie, because he was dead to me last year, but he’s slowly but surely rising from the dead this season. I really hope he can keep it up. -I think I liked JJ starting/Andy coming off the bench, but as stated multiple times, you really can’t draw any conclusions from this game. Shaq/JJ and Z/Andy make better pairs than the other way around, but I still think the latter pair should be the starting pair. -NEEDS MORE LAST YEAR’S STARTING 5 ON THE FLOOR TOGETHER! -Overall, I really get the sense that the… Read more »
Watching the entire game, it was the ugliest basketball I’ve seen in a long time. The comparison from this game and the game which followed (Portland-San Antonio) isn’t even close. I’m concerned the number of bad shots Cleveland took, including the variety of 18+ foot turnarounds that LeBron had. Possessions like that lose playoff games. In addition, the Knicks most of the second quarter were getting wide open looks off the pick and fade and a lot of open layups. Of course they don’t fall when Al Harrington is taking them, but when it’s Rasheed Wallace, Kevin Garnett, Rashard Lewis,… Read more »
I wish lebron could learn to focus like he does at MSG, every night. When lebron takes long/guarded threes/twos, I usually yell at him through the tv whether he makes it or not. When he does at MSG, I love it because it goes in nearly every time. I would have loved for the Knicks to compete, because I wish he could have just kept going like that all night. He would have gotten that 50 point triple double. For real, maybe 60.