Game 2: the adjustment game in the Eastern Conference Finals. This comes after both teams blew each other out at least once in Game 1.<\/p>\n
From the 5:24 mark of the second quarter to the 7:52 mark of the fourth quarter, the Cavaliers outscored the Knicks 66-33. For the mathematically challenged, that’s a 33-point margin over a 21-minute, 32-second span of time.<\/p>\n
And then from the 7:52 mark of the fourth quarter through the end of overtime, the Knicks outscored the Cavaliers 44-11. New York was able to outscored the Cavaliers by 33 points over a 12-minute, 52-second span of time.<\/p>\n
The Knicks won Game 1 because in addition to matching the Cavaliers’ 33-point tidal wave in just over half the time, they led by 11 to begin the game.<\/p>\n
Trusting the Cavaliers to defend this Knicks offense over an entire game is probably too much to ask. They can do it in spurts, and they can do it when the Knicks have impotent lineups on the floor. But the Cavaliers need to focus on fighting back offensively. That’s not just to finish the game, which they have given the Knicks confidence for the rest of the series no matter the margin, but to begin the game as well.<\/p>\n
The lasting conversation from Game 1 was about the Cavaliers collapse and what that meant for Kenny Atkinson’s game management and James Harden’s defense. Donovan Mitchell was a ghost, and still more visible than his starting bigs. But less addressed publicly was how awful the Cavaliers offense was for the first 18.5 minutes of Game 1: only 27 points. <\/p>\n
Needless to say, that’s not good enough. The Cavaliers need to keep Jalen Brunson out of the paint, but they also need to make Brunson defend, especially in the paint. And they need to do it early and often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Game 2: the adjustment game in the Eastern Conference Finals. This comes after both teams blew each other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-685167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}