Holy Christ. I was at this game, and it was terrible. In no way did the Cavaliers belong on the same court as the defending champs. If the Cavs had done everything right in this game, they would have been blown out, and they did everything wrong. Here’s the craziest thing about this game: The Lakers started things off by hitting three straight threes (what a surprise), went up 9-2, and the game already felt over. Derek Fisher was goofing around on a fast-break. The crowd was vaguely bemused. The Cavs looked confused and scared. The game absolutely felt over. And it was. The only thing we didn’t know is just how bad it would get.
In the early-going, the Lakers destroyed the Cavs’ undersized front line with Bynum and Gasol. Just absolutely destroyed. The Cavs’ bigs weren’t tall enough, weren’t athletic enough, and had no idea how to play defense, while the Laker bigs were making strong moves and beautiful interior passes to each other. Seriously, the Lakers’ interior passing is so much better than everybody else’s. It’s amazing. And of course, the Cavs only existed to show everybody just how good the Lakers’ interior passing is. Manny Harris was guarding Kobe, and the Lakers took a 39-point lead with only one Kobe basket. That is absurd.
That was the Cavs’ defense, which was extremely bad. The Cavs’ offense was where all that is good and happy in this world goes to die. The Cavs couldn’t move the ball, couldn’t shoot threes, and couldn’t score in the paint. Here were the Cavs’ go-to plays on offense, and I am not making any of this up:
J.J. Hickson shooting jumpers: J.J. relationship with his jumper is like a heroin addict’s relationship with heroin: it was great for that first little while, but now it would probably be better for everybody if he had never discovered jumpers in the first place. He looked completely terrified on both ends of the floor, and was awful.
Samardo Samuels in the post: Samardo Samuels is unathletic and undersized. He was matched up against Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. He seemed to believe that if he did enough counter-moves, Gasol or Bynum would forget that they were much taller than Samuels, and did not actually have to move to block his shot. At no point did Gasol or Bynum forget that Samardo Samuels could not score on them without stilts and a shotgun, and Samuels went 1-12 from the floor with four turnovers.
Mo Willams and Manny Harris firing jumpers: Mo and Manny figured out that there was nothing to be gained by going into the paint and trying to score on Bynum/Gasol, so they decided to fire a contested jumper if they got anything resembling space. It didn’t work. They combined to shoot 3-17.
Alonzo Gee doing energy things: This actually worked: Gee was active, gave great effort, and got some garbage buckets by staying active around the rim. This was not your fault, Alonzo Gee. Also, the PA announcer called him “Anthony Gee” after he scored his first basket.
This was a miserable, miserable, experience and game. The Lakers didn’t beat the Cavs in an athletic competition: they empirically proved that the Cavs did not belong on the court with them. This is rock bottom. Abandon all hope. Until later.
Hey this is the real Chris Bosh. I love my fans in Cleveland! Call me 5132892007!
Krolik, I hope to see you at the DDL tonight. We’ll get you through this together, I promise. We’re here for you, man.
On a serious note, the Cavs are my second team and this hurt. Just wow. I hope in situations like this that my team can beat half the other teams score, and at least we did that, but that’s not even a moral victory. Just ouch.
If Gilbert really believed all the stuff he said in his infamous letter, he would have made it before Lebron’s awful tv special.
Bull Shit! I’m the real Chris Bosh 5139673171
Stop trolling a good blog you douches. Ruining the damn comments section with this bullshit.
You can’t go any lower, so just learn whatever you can from the loss and play another game…
Yeah the cavs are awful but I rather they be awful and have a good chance at a first pick, than mediocre and not.
As for the whole Lbj tweet — if it was targeted at Gilbert then whatever, Gilbert is a multimillionaire so I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it. Now if it was targeted at the players/fans, which I believe it was, then it just shows the type of person Lbj is. The cavs didn’t turn their backs on him, he did. I hope karma comes his way and they get beat by the Lakers on the finals.
I think we’ll be a better team from this loss – at least the younger guys will be better for it. It’s time to move on, Utah can’t come soon enough.
The tweet doesn’t bother me at all. In fact the way some people have said things like they hope he blows out his knee’s or having the voodoo spell put on him/his team, I understand what he’s saying. If somebody wished negative things on me and then something bad happened to them, I’d say something about Karma too.
It’s not good to wish bad things on anybody (even if they have betrayed you). Personally I’ll never cheer for LeBron and don’t want him to win any rings, but I’m strongly oppose to anybody wishing him, his family or his teammates any harm. I don’t know who the comment was meant for, Gilbert or whomever, I just hope it wasn’t meant towards the players. I’m sure he’ll be interviewed about it and I hope he ‘clarifies’ his comments one way or the other.
‘And relating to that theme, 2nd real question. Why in god’s name, would you try to match the Lakers size with guys who have no chance of succeeding? Ugh. There needs to be an understanding of how to concede things. ‘
Looking at the minute distribution, I did think the Lakers “ran it up” slightly more than they should’ve, although, yes, the Cavs really were that bad and it their responsibility to keep it down. Why did the last three Lakers bench only get 6 minutes, 13 seconds apiece–less than any of the Cavs players? And why did Pau Gasol get 31 minutes, 21 seconds–more than anyone on the Cavs except Samuels and Harris?
The Nupe – “I’m sure he’ll be interviewed about it and I hope he ‘clarifies’ his comments one way or the other.”
The ‘ ‘ around the ‘clarifies’ is an appropriate choice, because he’ll dance around the issue just like he did with Contractiongate. He’ll say he didn’t mean it (like when he said he didn’t know what contraction was,) or he’ll perhaps accuse someone of hacking into his account.