Recap: Cleveland 99, Portland 94 (Or, I AM KYRIE, HEAR ME ROAR)

“I am Kyrie, hear me roar,

With a three stroke too great to ignore,

And I score too much to go back and pretend,

Cause I’ve heard all before,

I’ve been on the ground, restricted part of the floor,

And, no one’s ever gonna stop my threes again!”

Kyrie started the night 0-7 and then proceeded to shoot 17-29 from the field on his way to a career high 55 points. He willed in 11 three pointers on 19 attempts, and had 16 of the Cavs final 20 points. And, boy is his back sore. Kevin Love scored ten points in the first quarter and nothing the rest of the game. Timofey was the second leading scoring getting just 12 points. The craziest stat of all: Irving had just three turnovers. The Blazers really put up a fight, led by LaMarcus Aldridge. He scored 38 points on 13-23 shooting and had 11 rebounds. He even made two threes.

First Quarter

The Cavs started the night trying to get good looks by running off ball stuff while Kyrie kept the dribble alive. It worked out, as Kyrie assisted on the first three makes of the game. Love missed his first three pointer after running off a screen, but continued to hunt for shots. Nicolas Batum had the first Blazers points after getting freed up with a baseline screen. Love countered that with a two of his own on almost the same exact play. The Cavs managed to stop LaMarcus from getting hot early on. On Aldridge’s first touch, Kyrie poked the ball away. On his second touch, Kevin stopped his drive by sticking to him like Gorilla Glue while back pedaling and interrupting his shooting stroke. The Blazers tried to run and had five of their first seven points on the break, but the Cavs didn’t allow that to continue. After Lillard blocked a Kyrie jump shot and found LMA down court, Love took a charge in the paint to stop the nonsense points. Love was pumped from the play and scored six of the next seven Cavs points, including back-to-back threes in transition. The Blazers panicked and called a time out as they found themselves down, 16-9, after just six minutes of play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmS117u067o

With Matthew Dellavedova and Tristan Thompson on the floor, the Blazers figured it was time to catch up, and they were sort of right. Lillard found Meyers Leonard for a nice jump shot, and then Damian sprinted by Matty to earn two freebies. LMA found his On-Switch and quickly put Tristan on the wrong end of a highlight reel. During the final four minutes, he made 3-4 shots for eight straight points. It was about this time that Kyrie checked in for the Cavs and started playing video game ball. Remember: He had started the quarter 0-7. Not sure what he was doing on the bench, but the most likely explanation is he rage quit, ejected the cartridge, blew into it really hard, shoved it back in with a game-genie, and entered some hex codes for unstoppable shooting stroke. He put up 11 straight points off two Delly-assisted treys, an And-1 layup, and two free throws. On the foundation of Kyrie’s brilliance, the Cavs established a 31-21 lead as the first quarter concluded.

Second Quarter

Portland opened the quarter by drawing a three second violation on Mozgov and getting a tip-in bucket.  But Kyrie settled any fear I had about a Blazers run starting. He stroked it perfectly to garner eight of the Cavs next 15 points, with two long balls and two free throws during the first six minutes of the quarter. Every Cav was playing amazing defense off each drained three. After Kyrie hit a three without even dribbling once, he came down the floor and followed Steve Blake’s feet as if he were Blake’s socks. Blake turned it over. After Mike Miller drained a three with help from J.R. Smith, Kyrie strolled down the court and took a charge from Will Barton. Kyrie’s next three inspired Tristan to force a rare LMA miss.

With the Cavs up by 13 with five minutes left and Kyrie off the floor, the team unconsciously decided it was time to take a break from scoring. They put a piece of wood over the basket and missed three shots in two minutes. They also turned it over twice. Fortunately, Portland got stopped by the wood plank too, missing three of their four attempts. Once Kyrie came back into the game he quickly vaporized that board with a layup. Then he hit his fifth three of the evening, after which, Big T challenged a Lillard shot for a miss. That got Kyrie the ball back, and he canned his sixth three. The Cavs went to the locker room up, 54-44. They could have been up more, but Kevin Love missed all six of his shot attempts in the second quarter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcNGt2CRzzw

Third Quarter

The game started to change, and I thought it was going to get bad for the good guys. Iman got the start at small forward instead of the Matrix. Kyrie also turned it over on the first play so Chris “the Caveman” Kaman could score a layup on the break. However, Timo, unbeknownst to Kyrie, had looked up his own cheat codes during half time and scored with a nice hook shot over Kaman on his first touch. He got fouled the next time he tried to outsmart Kaman. LMA continued his overall dominant play scoring nine straight Blazers points without missing. Love looked on at him in envy, as he failed to scored six feet away from the basket with Batum covering him.

Kyrie started to jack up the three ball, but after missing two in a row and making me write down, “Oh no, he’s in three or die mode,” he dribbled past Lillard under the rim to feed Mozgov. Moz missed the two free ones, but at least the Cavs were attacking the rack. Shump stopped the bleeding on the next possession by executing a textbook hop step move to Meyer Leanard’s right side and ultimately out of his reach for a layup.

Mozgov flushed a sweet dunk after Kyrie fed him the ball with a couple minutes left in the quarter. Kyrie had called for it back, but Timo faked the pass, throwing his man off balance in order to drive to the hole for a one dribble slam. In typical fashion, Kyrie scored the final eight points of the quarter, including his eighth and ninth threes, totaling 39 points. Aldridge made his last three attempts during the same time, hitting mid-range jumper after mid-range jumper to total 29 points.  The Cavs opted to double team Lilliard quickly with Delly and Mozgov as Lillard dribbled to the left side.  The Blazers were only too obliged to the Cavs for leaving LMA to spot up on the elbow for some automatic Js. Lillard also showed a pulse, hitting two threes after not having one since the first three minutes of the game. Cavs were clinging to a five-point lead going into the final frame: 79-74.

Fourth Quarter

The Cavs stumbled a little bit to start the final 12 minutes. Kyrie had the first six points for the Cavs, but it took six minutes and seven shots to get them. Love’s shooting woes continued. He missed all three of his attempts, and to make things worse, he started to play a little too relaxed on defense. Leonard scored a three because Love played three feet off of him to bring the Blazers within one at 83-82.  Kyrie looked gassed, and started settling for long threes without even looking to run any other offense.  Finally he broke through again, with a ridiculous left-handed layup in traffic.  The Cavs played very effective defense on the next possession, but Christmas came super early for Steve Blake who threw in a prayer as he was falling over with the shot clock about to expire.  At this point Blatt gave Kyrie a breather, and the world wondered if the Cavs would score again.

The Cavs really struggled to put the ball in the hoop, and after a 24-second violation (because Mozgov air-balled an awkward turnaround as the shot-clock expired) the Cavs really had to dig on defense.  The Blazers went back to LMA but Mozgov did a great job bodying him and Delly came over to make LMA give it up.  As he did, Delly recovered to his man like a freaking Mongoose, and J.R. Smith rotated to cover the weak-side spot-up shooter.  The Blazers were unable to exploit the double team, and as Wesley Matthews received a pass in his pocket, he was forced to put the ball on the floor as the Cavs closed out hard.  But he shuffled his feet and was whistled for traveling.  He wanted to shoot it, but the Cavs recovered too effectively.  Great defense.  The Cavs offense got bailed out by a J.R. Smith step-back on the next possession, giving them a three-point lead.

But LMA hit a trey to tie the game at 87.  Iman Shumpert tried to dribble baseline and bounced it off his foot out of bounds.  David Blatt had seen enough and re-inserted Kyrie for the grande finale.  On the next Blazers’ possession Matthews stroked another long ball off some screen action to put the Blazers up by three.

Kyrie got to the line to bring the Cavs within one, but LMA bulldozed his way through Mozgov to pop in a point-blank shot.

After Kyrie’s jumper rolled out, the Blazers took over with just 1:45 left and a three point lead, Aldridge somehow secured an offensive board as he was falling down. It looked like the ref rolled his hands in classic feet shuffling motion, but a timeout was actually called even though it should have been a jump-ball at best. Portland came out of it and faced a quasi zone defensive look from the Good Guys. It was bizarre, and the team rotated the the craziest way I have ever seen a team do with guys coming from across the court to cover players who appeared to be covered already. Yet, the basketball Gods wanted us to win this game, so whoever needed to be covered was covered. After the Blazers made their sixth pass of the play, Timo sprinted like Usain Bolt at Matthews forcing a long miss on a three-point attempt.

Kyrie received the ball in the front court and passed it to Love near the high elbow. He looked him in the eye as if to say, “stay, I’ll be back.” He then ran around Kevin in a hooking pattern only to return to where he was before. He took a handoff and then spun back towards the sideline to get his feet behind the line and drained the three to tie it at 92. Portland couldn’t score the next trip down and fouled Mozgov trying to get the offensive board. Timo channeled his Siberian ancestors’ blood, to make both freebies. Cavs went up 2 with 36 seconds remaining.

But that still wasn’t all she wrote. Out of the Portland timeout, Portland went back to old faithful. LMA posted up in the key, turned to his right to get by Mozgov, and got fouled by the entire Cavs team. He sank both making him 10/10 for the evening and the Cavs called a time out with an awkward 27 seconds left. There was not enough time for a two-for-one but too much time to summon the buzzer with the final possession.  Portland was going to get the ball back unless the Cavs could secure an offensive rebound. In the huddle, David Blatt coached by not coaching. Kyrie just dribbled up the court slowly and Batum picked him up giving a little slack. After all, who takes a three if the game is tied, especially when he is able to drive almost at will against any one in the world.

You know who does if you’re reading this; THE BADDEST MAN IN THE WORLD does. Kyrie lifted and I knew it was perfect right away. He broke the franchise record for threes in a game, and broke the back of the relentless TrailBlazers.

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

The Blazers called a 20 second timeout, but Lillard was unable hit the falling-out-of-bounds corner three after LMA scrubbed Kyrie off with a pick. Kyrie rebounded the ball, got fouled, and iced the game with two more freebies to put the Cavs up by five with two seconds to go. Cavs win it, 99-94.

Gripes

1. If your name wasn’t Kyrie tonight and you played on the Cavs, you just couldn’t score. Not including Kyrie’s shooting percentage, the Cavs shoot 35% from the field. From the three line the other guys shot 22%.

2. The Cavs couldn’t stop LMA. Early on I thought Love was actually the answer because once he was switched off of him in the first quarter Aldridge immediately shot 3-4 on Tristan. Later on when the Cavs put Mozgov on him in the fourth, Timo blocked him once and then let him score six more points. The Cavs tried to double him a few times, but he usually passed out of that action, which is how he got his two assists. And, LMA’s final free throws with 27 seconds left in the game were earned with three guys poking him.

Hypes

1. This win is attributable to Kyrie and Blatt. At the beginning of the game, Kyrie was dribbling a ton and waiting for someone to get open. He actually assisted on the first three makes. None of those makes were really in the flow of the game though, as guys moved haphazardly around the floor. I’m not sure if guys weren’t running plays or what happened, but Kyrie started to make the game happen on his own by just using picks. This might have been a Blatt decision and it might have been a Kyrie decision, but either way Blatt didn’t interrupt the process once it started.

Just watched live one of if not the one greatest performances by a person and he happen to be my teammate/runningmate/brother @KyrieIrving!!

— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 29, 2015

2. Love shot the ball poorly and he gave up two big threes that led to the game being tied; however, he really played defense the whole game. He took a charge early on, and at the end of the game, when the Cavs needed the stop and were running the weird zone defense, he ran to the corner to stop the three ball from being shot just as hard as Timo ran when he had to close out on Matthews. He also had the assist on the all-important Kyrie three that tied the game at 92.

3. Defensively, the Cavs played wonderfully, holding Portland to 44% from the field. I was most impressed by how well the Cavs protected the three line. Portland typically makes 37% from deep and tonight they shot 32%. Kyrie definitely fought over a ton of picks to limit Damian Lillard tonight. He was 4-19 and had 14 points instead of his season average of 22. He took ten three pointers and only shot 30% which is down from his season average of 37%.

4. The Cavs limited their turnovers to just eight. The last time they played without LeBron James was against the Sacramento Kings, and they had 14 turnovers.

5. Tonight it didn’t seem like Kyrie was playing iso ball as much and that’s because seven of his makes were assisted.

6. Blatt did really made sure to rest Kyrie. He kept pulling him around the five minute mark of the first three quarters, and it obviously worked. He scored 11 points to end the first quarter and eight points to end the second and third quarters. Even during the final 12 minutes with the Cavs up by just one, Blatt still rested Kyrie almost a full two minutes.

7. The Cavs defeated a top-5 team without LeBron James and they did it on the second night of a back-to-back.  The revenge tour continues Friday at the Kings.

http://instagram.com/p/ya8Zmaj0sr/