The Pacers are a fascinating team this season.
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Needless to say, the Cavs will need all the help they can get with the Warriors recently welcoming back superstar point guard Steph Curry.
Despite LeBron James finishing with 27 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds, the Cavaliers still lost for the third time in-a-row.
LeBron has held the ball 4.89 seconds per touch (up from 4.37 last year) and dribbled 3.67 times per touch (up from 3.28 last year), according to NBA.com. 26-13 against everybody else.
We give a lot of grief, usually deserved, to officials across all sports when they screw up. Thus far, this looks like it might be that team, and if it is last night will be remembered as their coming out party. “We still got to stay focused”. We showed some resilience. Just got to find a way to get out of it. By the end of the half, it was down to 14-points, 58-44. Darren Collison was huge with 22 points on 9-of-11 shooting.
“He’s just born ready”, said teammate Victor Oladipo, referring to Stephenson’s “Born Ready” Brooklyn playground nickname.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have lost seven of their last ten games and have the worst defense in the league during that stretch.
These two have a long history – from Lance’s immature choking sign while on the bench during the postseason to that famous gif that remains popular today of Lance blowing in LeBron’s ear. He also continued his years of irritating LeBron James and earned a technical foul on James in the fourth quarter.
Following the game, James said the out-of-bounds call was correct, but he also made mention of a prior “no-call” that allowed Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo to score the winning basket over the Oklahoma City Thunder. “Every single time we come in here to practise”.
Oladipo gave the Pacers the lead for good on a three pointer with just over two minutes to play.
One game that all National Basketball Association fans around the league make sure to circle on the calendar each season is the game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the #Golden State Warriors on Christmas Day, and the following game which lies midway through January.
When pressed on it, he replied: “I don’t know”.
So for Cleveland, that game plan made sense, and it was executed well.
One of the downfalls of Cleveland during that quarter was their 32 percent shooting from the field, while their defense allowed IN to hit for five 3-pointers.
Bogdanovich scored 22 points and George Hill added 21, but he missed two free throws over the final 70 seconds. The coaches can not miss that. That’s all mental. Got to figure it out and got to just put your pride aside and do whatever it takes to win that particular game.
They narrowly avoided a collapse like the Celtics game by giving the Cavaliers a chance at getting a good look to end the game.
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“We’ve been learning it, appreciating it, understanding it, since Day 1 of training camp”, said DeRozan on the court of the Biosteel Centre, the Raptors’ practice facility.
