Love scored a season-high 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to help beat the Atlanta Hawks 109-97 on Saturday night in a rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals.
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Then Cleveland (9-3) danced over and around the Bucks (5-7) to halt a two-game losing streak and avenge a double-overtime loss Saturday in Milwaukee. Seemingly out of frustration, James headed to the bench without the proper protocol of player substitutions.
Four-time NBA MVP James rejoined Cavaliers for a second spell in 2014 after previously playing for the franchise between 2003 and 2010.
“I blew a gasket”, James said of the error, which happened with the Cavaliers crushing the Hawks, 72-46.
After a few days of James publicly ripping his team’s play and an uncomfortable 45-minute film session Wednesday that exposed a lot of what the Cavs have done wrong the last few games, the Cavs responded the way both James and coach David Blatt wanted – at least in the first half.
“Well, he was frustrated”.
“As a young player, I like to take the challenge, but I don’t want to just talk about me”, Antetokounmpo said. I think we need to understand that.
James said he had a comeback for Blatt’s hockey crack: “There aren’t hockey subs in basketball, but I do make hockey assists”.
Given that the Cavs were up 26 points at the time, the gaffe hardly mattered, except that it seemed to come as a fit of pique by James over his team’s careless play.
The Cavs are sitting at the top of the Eastern Conference standings with a win-loss record of 10-3. Iman Shumpert underwent wrist surgery at the start of the season while Timofey Mozgov is expected to miss two weeks due to a right shoulder strain.
Another notable incident occurred with 6:27 remaining in the second quarter, when Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer was ejected for arguing with officials after only one technical foul. “We got to play tougher and meaner, and that’s on the bigs, first and foremost”. Kenny Atkinson coached the Hawks the rest of the night. Much was made of the Cavaliers being without Love and Kyrie Irving for most of the playoffs last season, but they were also without Varejao for the entire postseason and the 3½ months leading up to it. Smith added 18 points on 7-of-12 shots and Love had 22 points (7-of-15 FGs) and 15 rebounds for a double-double. The Greek Freak had 12 points in the first quarter, throwing down dunks of every variety.
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Aside from Paul Pierce, there haven’t been many players who have tortured the Magic worse than LeBron James.
