Pregame
Starting lineups
Raptors: Jose Calderon, Anthony Parker, Jamario Moon, Andrea Bargnani, Chris Bosh
Cavs: Daniel Gibson, Sasha Pavlovic, LeBron James, Drew Gooden, Zydrunas Ilguaskas
Officials
Mark Wunderlich, Kevin Fehr, Scott Wall
–This guy Moon is one of the stories of the year in the NBA so far. He’s a 27-year-old rookie that got a training camp invite after an open tryout and then somehow made the team even know the Raptors had 15 guaranteed contracts. Now the former Harlem Globetrotter is in the starting lineup. Parker usually covers LeBron but I suppose it is possible Moon could be on him at times.
–TJ Ford is out with an arm stinger, which is lucky for the Cavs because they have problems with his quickness. Calderon, though, is a starter-quality players.
–The Raptors play small in general and all their players like to shoot from the outside. The challenge for the Cavs will be to deny dribble penetration as much as possible and scramble back on the weakside to cover those spot up shooters. This is the type of team that has been beating them early in the season.
–Look for Ira Newble and Eric Snow to get some extended playing time today.
–This is a 1 p.m. game in the middle of a road trip for the Raptors. They all left for Thanksgiving and then all flew to Cleveland separately yesterday. Chances are they will be a little lethgaric, the Cavs can take advantage of this early.
Halftime — Raptors 56, Cavs 52
–56 points and 54 percent shooting for the Raptors. Not the type of defense that is going to get it done. Period.
–The Raptors are a jump shot team and they are hitting a lot of them. At one point the Cavs had 24 points in the paint, the Raps had eight and they were ahead by nine. But the Cavs are forcing to help too much on dribble penetration. It’s understandable when it happens with Calderon, but guys like Jason Kapono are getting to the basket.
–Because of the way the Raptors play, it is possible there will be wild swings. When they hit a few in a row they get up big but their misses come in bunches too and lead to fastbreak points off long rebounds. The Cavs have 13 fastbreak points in the half.
–Chris Bosh scored 16 points in the first quarter with Eric Snow and Ira Newble spending time on him. That should be avoided, of course.
–Zydrunas Ilgauskas has five turnovers in the first half, the Raptors have just three as a team.
The Cavs’ seven turnovers have cost them 12 points.
–LeBron is getting zero foul calls and he’s getting frustrated. He’ll need to continue to put pressure on the officials by driving. But he’s done a great job of beating double teams with passing. In fact, all the Cavs have. They have 15 assists on 22 baskets, which is great execution. If they play a little defense in the second half, they’ll have an excellent chance to win.
Postgame — Cavs 111, Raptors 108
Stars:
LeBron James, 37 points, 12 rebounds, 12 assists
Chris Bosh, 41 points
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, 16 points, 15 rebounds
–First off, Bosh was great and LeBron was again unstoppable. Bosh had 17 points in the fourth and LeBron had 14 including a crazy fallaway jumper with 16 seconds left that put the Cavs up 3 and two free throws with 2.5 seconds left.
–This is not the way the Cavs want to win games. Bosh is one thing, he’s hard to guard. The last two games have shown how valuable Anderson Varejao is because the Cavs have all sorts of trouble with active power forwards. Calderon is a handful, too, but he cannot be permitted to just drive into the middle of the floor.
–Plus the Cavs put up 30 3-pointers. This is not the way for them to win. It was fun for the fans to watch them make 13, in fact this was a very enjoyable game to attend at the Q, I will bet most people left feeling they got their money’s worth. But that’s not the Cavs’ game. They won this one and as they are searching right now, they will take them however they can get it.
–Classic moment in the second half when the Cavs mascot had a skit using a bunch of four-foot high inflatable dinosaurs to mock the Raptors. LeBron James Jr. apparently was taken by them because he wanted one. So LeBron’s mom, Gloria, walked into the back and got one and brought it out to him, carrying it down the whole court. He sat it in front of him for the rest of the game.
–So LeBron is averaging 39 points, 10 rebounds and 9.4 assists over the last five games. Last guy to do that over a five-game span was Oscar Robertson in 1960. Because the Cavs are .500, LeBron isn’t getting Player of the Week Awards, etc., but this is the best November he’s ever had. The ratings are down and most of the talk shows I hear are talking Browns and Buckeyes, which is fine at this time of the year, but I am getting the feeling some people are missing this guy playing at this level.
–LeBron did not come out in the second half and Gibson played 43 minutes so we’ll see how it affects them today at Indiana. By the way, this is the fourth straight back-to-back when the Cavs have played a team who had the day off before. All the Cavs back-to-backs so far have had the second game on the road.
Quotes
LeBron: “It’s not as easy as it may look. I’m just getting into my comfort zone. I just tried to do whatever it took for us to win.”
Mike Brown: “He gets a triple-double and it seems effortless, he comes up with those numbers all the time. You try not to take it for granted, but he’s so talented that sometimes you do.”
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
NICE SPAM kajun36 !!!!
Anyways, what has happened to the Cavs defense?!?!? That used to be our forte, but now we have good offense (atleast from LBJ), but no defense!!!!
Man, Lebron really wants to run today. He has taken it the length of the court a couple times by himself. Woot!!
Whats with all the spam Brian? I think you need to implement one of those things to stop the spam like where they have you type in some extra letters before you can submit your post.
Spammers suck!!!
Does anyone know how many points per possession are the Cavs giving up this year as opposed to last year?
Another magnificent performance by LBJ. But Ferry has screwed up this team so badly. If Lebron had a real team behind him, we’d be competing for the championship. Someone in the front office has to get a sense of urgency about this, because Lebron will not stay here without more talent.
How many triple doubles is that for Lebron this year? Dayum, he is on a serious tear. Anybody know the record for triple doubles in a season? Maybe Lebron will get it this year!
JoeHoops, he’d have to get 42. Not likely.
Check out the expanded standings. All of the division leaders have a positive points scored vs. points allowed. The CAVS are negative. So, it would seem Defense IS all it’s touted to be.
CAVS players (Lebron, you too), score more points than you give up and you will win a championship. Mike Brown and the Spurs (remember them, they win championships) are right…Defense first, scoring will come.
Toronto scored 108 points against the CAVS. Spurs give up an average of 91 points per game. No wonder Mike Brown is exasperated. I love the CAVS, but the players need to get a clue.
I listen to a local radio talk show (Rover) every morning and he takes IM’s from listeners and reads some of them on the air, allowing his audience to interact with the show.
Wouldn’t it be neat if Joe Tate would do that during his Cavs radio broadcasts? I would love to hear him get some IM’s from some of you knuckleheads and read them LOL.
Mr. Windhorst claims that the amount of three’s taken by the Cavs were some kind of problem but the fact is the VAST majority of attempts for 3 today were wide-open shots taken by Gibson, Jones and LBJ. Last i checked, all those players are more than capable of taking and making over 40% of their 3’s. That equals over 50% in “Real Shooting Pct.” so i fail to see the negative here. Rather, what is see is a sportswriter who thinks he knows the NBA game and has been anti-jump shot forever because some old coot JV basketball coach the writer had in junior-high forbade his team to shoot jumpers. Perhaps the writer should remember that these are professional basketball players?
Gibson and Jones WERE all that today, but Windhorst is right that we can’t count on that. We won’t light it up from downtown every night.
But then, if they weren’t on fire, maybe we’d have seen more looks for Z or Gooden.
Today, it worked.
http://www.LeCavs.com
I’m sorry “LeCavs,” but one CAN expect Jones and Gibson to do that when they are wide-open as they were today and most likely will be for the rest of the season as the defense of the opposition will focus on LBJ. It is a myth you cannot “count” on 3-point shooting.
The fact is Gibson shooting over 50% from the 3-pt line and Jones is at about 40% and LBJ is around 38%. Have you ever heard of the stat “Real Shooting Pct.?” Google it and you will see how well Gibson and Jones are doing in that category.
Again, wide-open shots from the 3-pt by shooters who are among the league’s best is a good offense strategy. I defy anyone to show me statistical evidence to prove otherwise. Evidence, not some JV coaches mantra or “philosophy” about jump shots…
Did I really see a lineup today of LeBron, Snow, Damon Jones, Devin Brown and Newble?
Was LeBron the Center?
lord knows i’d rather see boobie, damon and lebron taking all of these 3-point shots and not larry hughes. is anybody else glad that he’s injured??? that being said, they better watch taking that many bombs against better defensive teams or they will get run out of the gym. anytime you take more 3-point shots than what you shoot in free throws, it’s almost always a recipe for disaster. i don’t know the stats for sure, but i’m willing to bet it’s a much lower win percentage when you do that. as for the dim-bulb schedule makers, once again they are punishing the cavs by making them play more back-to-backs than most other teams. i believe they had the 2nd most of such games last season and are right on schedule again this season. why is that??? plus, none of these back-to-backs are ever both home games. why not??? they often play back-to-backs where they are both road games, so why can’t they let both of them be a home game sometime??? consider the cost savings??? i just hope the cavs can come back tomorrow and win their 3rd game in a row for just the first time this season. go cavs!!!
I was at the game today. Fun game to be at. Couple crazy things no one has mentioned. In the first half, LeBron had a breakaway steal and took off way too early for a throw-down – I thought it would be the sickest dunk of his career but he tried to lay it in at the last second and missed it. Won’t see that very often.
I’m often flagergasted by the way NBA referees call games. I don’t know what it is about the Cavs, but their style of play seems to make it impossible for refs to ever “bail them out.” To put it in persective, I watched D Wade get phantom call after phantom call last night on TV against the Rockets – LeBron just doesn’t get any calls from the refs and I don’t know why. What’s probably worse is that I am 100% convinced that Sasha Pavlovic is the most disrespected player in the NBA by referees. It has to be a combination of: He’s foreign+he plays out of control+his game is very deliberate+he jumps off the wrong foot+he’s scary? I don’t know but for the past 3 years I have been simply shocked. At first I just figured it was because he was a young player. I can’t figure it out anymore. 90% of questionable calls will go against Sasha.
As a longtime Cavalier fan I am absolutely outraged that with 5 minutes to play in the game and the Cavaliers up by 6 points, the scoreboard started showing the “CHA-LU-PA” cheer for the crowd to chant. I almost fell outta my chair. In a highly competitive ballgame, one that your team desperately needs to win, you have your home crowd chanting for free food with FIVE MINUTES TO PLAY!!!!!!!!!! I mean, isn’t that something you put up there when it’s 99-80 with 30 seconds left???? This was a tight ballgame! And sure enough, the Cavs blew their lead and needed 2 ridiculously difficult shots from Lebron James to go down and then some clutch free throws to finally put the Raptors away. The Cavs have had a problem for 3 years now. When they are ahead with a few minutes to go in the 4th, every play turns into – burn 20 seconds of clock before heaving up a bad shot. It’s playing way to conservative. You should still be looking to score. Just don’t take bad shots early in the clock. If you are wide open with 17 on the shot clock – better to take and make it, than get a 24 second violation or just a very low-percentage shot off (with 2-4 minutes left anyway).
Anyway, I think some of the entertainment personnel need to get their head on straight. I really liked the bowling into raptors thing that Moondog did (and I kinda like Moondog somehow now) but for the love of God – I get so sick of the crowd getting more excited for free grade-F quality beef food and crappy oversized T-shirts. I started an MVP chant for Lebron when he was on the FT line in the closing moments – and I heard no echo – how bout some MVP chants on the scoreboard? How about less images of Michigan, Steelers, and now Illinois, and more highlights of LeBron throwing down windmills. Less t-shirt throwing, and more Cavalier trivia and moon-dog bowling. Less scream-team and more bucket-boys.
And for the love of God – NO MORE FREAKING CHALUPA CHANTS!!!!! We pay to watch LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers – if we want free crap we can go to a flea market.
As far as Brian pointing out the barrage of 3s – i would like to counter by pointing out that most of the 3s were good shots in rhythm, not off the dribble heaves. The guys shooting most of the (D Jones, Boobie, LeBron) are 3pt shooters, and the Toronto defense was giving them to the Cavs. Basically, Toronto played LeBron in man-coverage outside the 3pt line and then doubled him anytime he tried to drive or post up. Not the typical “Lebron Zone” where everyone has an eye on him swiping as he goes by, but another body on him. He countered by making some slick passes cross-court and in to Z. I agree that the Cavs game is inside, but the way the Raptors were playing, there were lots of open 3’s to be had. Also, I was shocked that Z had no free throws. He was working hard the whole night and getting pushed around by the smaller Bargnani down low. Lots of pushing allowed on that end – but anytime Z breathed on Bosh it was 2 FTs. The foul where Z fouled out was absolutely absurd. Bosh made a nice move and Z just held his ground with his hand up. Not a foul.
2 perceptions about LeBron’s game: The form in his shot has improved. His foul shooting is starting look more like Carmelo Anthony and less like LeBron James – in that I mean he is shooting much more with his wrists and less with his shoulders. He is also more balanced and his rotation is perfect, which means he’s getting his elbow under. If he can keep his legs under him, shooting should continue to improve. The other pereception about LeBron game is that he continues to avoid going baseline on teams. I don’t quite understand why. Defenders don’t seem to play him to either side (as he’s extremely good at finishing at with his left) so I can’t figure out why he doesn’t force the issue baseline more when he’s in iso coverage. He either jab-step-shoots over people or dribbles back towards the middle of the court. If he gets even a half-step on an iso-defender going baseline, the defender will almost have to foul to keep Lebron from finishing. I wonder if the referees whistle-swallowing has anything to do with it.
I’ll take the win. Important game for the Cavs to win. Defense picked it up in the 3rd but they need to continue to improve. Also, LeBron seems emotionally apathetic right now in spite of the fact that his game is the best I’ve ever seen. i hope he is content. I want a happy Lebron at all times.
Tom, I can give you a very logical reason as to why Pavlovic is disrespected. I mean, just take a good look at the guy. Specifically, his head. Pavlovic looks exactly like a young Count Dracula. If David Stern wasn’t so anal about the dress code, the refs would be wearing garlic necklaces.
Would it be at all possible this year for the Cavs to get an easy win, play a complete game, or blow out an opponent? geez, every game they have won has been a close one and it sure would be nice for the last couple minutes of a game to take out lebron and Z and throw in shannon brown and cedric simmons and let them play in a situation where even they cant screw things up
I was at the Cavs-Raptors and, while happy with a win, I’m also alarmed how much this team has regressed from last year. Although LeBron is playing the best basketball of his career, the Cavs look like a very average team. The guard play continues to be an absolute mess and teams continue to score easily against us. Although Gibson has been a great spot-up shooter, he plays spotty defense and is not a particularly effective passer. That said, he’s clearly the Cavs best guard right now. Meanhwile, this team (and even the crowd) desperately miss AV’s energy and hustle.
Maybe AV will come to his senses and sign a reasonable contract? Perhaps Pavlovic will get his legs back and play up to his potential? Maybe getting Eric Snow back in the rotation will improve our ball-handling and intensity? unless all of those things happen, I think the Cavs will struggle to make it out of the first round of the play-offs.
I don’t blame Ferry for signing Hughes — it’s been a massive disappointment and painful to see, but it made sense at the time. However, none of our free agent acquisitions has worked out and, collectively speaking, he hasn’t been so savvy at jusdging free-agent talent. He created the mess and he needs to fix it. Or else, we’re going to be watching th best baller on the planet leave town in a couple of years. We desperately need some new talent.
And no free passes for Mike Brown. I’m tired of reading his quotes about how much he appreciates LBJ. We all knw he’s amazing. How about getting players to understand their roles so we don’t have to see Newble shooting contested threes with 16 seconds on the shot clock or watch four players stand around every time LBJ has the ball on the wing.
Is everyone as relieved as I am that Hughes is injured and can’t play. He’s a solid guy, but he has been a disaster with the Cavs. I’m actually looking forward to having E Snow back in the line-up, but the Cavs should move Hughes, if possible, for everyone’s sake.
I see Alan T is still posting stupid comments. Good to know he hasn’t matured since my departure and return.
Brian,
Is there truth to Ric Bucher’s statement that AV has played his last game in a Cavs’ uniform?
The Genius would like to thank Tom as his post was most welcome here. Well said, sir!
Also, BW: Has anyone asked Varejao or his agent what he’s asking for? I thought I saw a report that Sideshow says reported figures are erroneous … where is the info coming from, and why haven’t we even seen a “no comment” from the agent?
JoeHoops, please, you’ve been here the entire time. A different screen name doesn’t mean the person posting the stuff isn’t here. It just means that JoeHoops isn’t here.
And how can anybody in their right mind possibly deny that Pavlovic doesn’t resemble a young Count Dracula? Bela Lugosi, eat your heart out.
larry, actually, that’s a damn good question. When there’s pro-Cavs spin, like Snow supposedly not wanting to be bought out so he could go to Atlanta, Snow’s agent was quoted. But curiously, when it comes to Varejao spin, all we’re getting is Ferry’s side, and not one single quote from Varejao’s agent. Why not? .