The Cavaliers are starting to look like a team that needed seven games to beat the Raptors in the first round and seven more games to beat the Pistons in the second round.<\/p>\n
Two nights after losing a game the Cavs convinced themselves they should have won, there was no question which team was better in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals.<\/p>\n
The New York Knicks broke open a 53-53 tie in the third quarter on May 21 in Madison Square Garden with 18 unanswered points and rolled over the Cavaliers, 109-93.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers squandered a 22-point fourth-quarter lead in Game 1 and lost, 115-104, in overtime. They had 48 hours to figure out what went wrong.<\/p>\n
The Cavs did not match the Knicks\u2019 energy in the second half of Game 2. The Knicks have won nine straight playoff games. They beat the Hawks three straight times after trailing Atlanta two games to one in a first-round series. They swept the 76ers in the second round.<\/p>\n
The Knicks eliminated the 76ers on May 10 and did not play again until Game 1 with the Cavaliers nine days later. It is fair to wonder how much the Knicks\u2019 being rusty contributed to the Cavaliers building their huge lead in Game 1. The Knicks are proving to be the more efficient team on both ends of the floor when they are in sync.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to get our legs under us, quite honestly,\u201d Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson told reporters in his postgame news conference. \u201cWe know the rest advantage. Getting home always helps with that, but we probably didn\u2019t have the juice we needed tonight. It\u2019s going to hit at some time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers were in the same situation against the Pistons. They lost the first two games in Detroit and won four of the next five. They won two at Rocket Arena, won Game 5 in Detroit, lost Game 6 at home and then played their best game of the playoffs to beat the Pistons, 125-104, in Game 7 two nights before their series with the Knicks began.<\/p>\n
The Cavs can repeat the scenario. The series moves to Rocket Arena on May 23 and May 25 for the next two games.<\/p>\n
Can they win four of the next five games? Sure, it\u2019s possible. But this feels like the scene from the movie \u201cDumb and Dumber\u201d when Mary, the woman Lloyd Christmas (a.k.a. Jim Carrey) wants to hook up with, tells him the chances of such a union are \u201cone out of a million.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd Christmas\u2019 face lights up, and he says, \u201cSo you\u2019re telling me there\u2019s a chance. Yeah!\u201d<\/p>\n
Knicks star Jalen Brunson scored 38 points in Game 1. The Cavs made it their mission to make sure that didn\u2019t happen again. It didn\u2019t. But Brunson passed out a playoff career high 14 assists and added 19 points.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers drive to the basket to draw fouls if they don\u2019t score. The strategy worked in Game 2, but not the shooting part of it. The Cavs attempted 32 free throws compared to 14 by the Knicks. The Cavs missed 10 free throws.<\/p>\n
Sam Merrill was an uncharacteristic 0-of-7 on 3-point tries. He attempted only one 3-pointer in the second half. The Cavs were a collective 9-of-35 on 3s.<\/p>\n
Merrill and Max Strus were a combined 2-of-15 from the field.<\/p>\n
Evan Mobley scored 14 points in the first half. He did not score in the second half. The Knicks neutralized him.<\/p>\n
It is bound to be a long night if the opponent takes away inside scoring and the Cavs shoot 25.7 percent from long distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t shoot the ball well,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cI thought we had a lot of good looks from 3. It wasn\u2019t a great shooting night. At the end of the day, you have to put the ball in the hole.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers had 13 offensive rebounds compared to five for the Knicks. The Cavs cut their turnovers down to eight after turning it over 21 times in Game 1. And they still lost by 16 points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cavaliers are starting to look like a team that needed seven games to beat the Raptors in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[8174,2558,355,99],"class_list":["post-658023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-latest-headlines","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}