The Cleveland Cavaliers embark on their first extended trip of the year starting tonight. They take on the Grizzlies tonight in Memphis, the first game in a stretch of six of the next seven games, which will be on the road. It will be interesting to see where the wine and gold is in the Eastern Conference standings after these road games, as they are currently two games ahead of Orlando in the loss column and three ahead of the Celtics.
Friday night’s 98-83 resounding win over the Celtics put a punctuation mark on the Cavs’ early season success. LeBron James put a lock on Paul Pierce, holding him to 11 points on 4 of 15 shooting, making a claim to be included on the NBA’s All-Defensive team for the first time. ESPN analyst Mark Jackson even went as far to say James should be the Defensive Player of the Year.
The performance cemented why I believe there is no question that #23 is the best player in the world. He simply dominated the game on both ends of the floor, making steals, blocking shots, diving on the floor for loose balls, and, of course, scoring 38 points, dishing out 6 assists, and grabbing 7 rebounds in 36 minutes. What was surprising to me was that LeBron hit just 4 of 12 outside shots, because it seemed to me that his jumper was falling. It just shows that he made shots when the Cavs needed them.
Yes, the Celtics were struggling going into the game, but the wine and gold were missing Zydrunas Ilgauskas, their starting center, and a key outside shooter. Boston has rebounded with a pair of wins against Toronto, but the second of those was an overtime win in Beantown, hardly a sign the green has emerged from their funk. Celts’ Coach Doc Rivers even tried to send Ben Wallace to the foul line repeatedly in the fourth quarter in an effort to get back in the game, but Big Ben hit half of his charity tosses to foil the strategy somewhat.
That struck me as somewhat of a desperate move by Rivers, who obviously is concerned about the performance of his team since the end of their 19 game winning streak on Christmas Day.
These first two road games (Memphis and Chicago) are critical because the Cavaliers are coming off of the huge win against Boston, and quite frankly, neither team is very good. Will the wine and gold learn a lesson after losing to the Wizards in Washington a week and a half ago? This team can demonstrate their mental toughness by winning both games before returning home to play New Orleans on Friday night.
JK
Cleveland Sports Perspective 