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Holy ugly basketball.

Btw I feel like Lauri has shot 8% from 3 for the past 2 months. What the hell I knew he was streaky but streaks usually last a week or two--not a month or two.

I also feel like the Cavs have played 75% of their games on the road this year

Why is Harrison Barnes getting super star calls.

Garland needs to stop trying to force it inside.

1st half good enough.

RRondo is having his first legit good game (so far). He's still lost at some defensive situations but he gets the grip of the team with less hesitations and better decisions. He looks motivated, speaking with his teammates at game and trash-talking opponents and stuff.

Nice.

Kevin Amor smiles again while takes advantage of TanKings' mistakes, Laurita being more substancial than he was lately, Allen plays AS level after a G-League level game yesterday, Moble and Ce Dios look more like themselves.

La Mar in foul problems but I don't foresee will be big deal.

Darius not bad but I feel like if he could use some rest.

I'll take it, but we are leaning on the starters awfully hard.

The game ended up being too close for comfort - basically a coin toss in the end - although it looked like a game that could have been decided already in the 3rd quarter (in Cavs favor). If only either Love or Markkanen had hit those 3 pointers better... I'll take the win though. The team and especially naturally Allen truly did try to work for the rebounds this game and that probably made the difference.

jbk1234 wrote:I'll take it, but we are leaning on the starters awfully hard.

Really, just Mobley who played 42 minutes, second most was Garland at 34. Nice call by JBB to bring Rondo in on the last play, but leaning that hard on Mobley on a back to back and 3 in 4 is asking for trouble. I was wondering if he just forgot to sub him out. Why not give Ed Davis some run?

Garland did a nice job closing this one out, especially with the Kings relying heavily on Mitchell to defend him. Garland's own defense continues to improve. Fortunately a single defender can be shaken off with a good screen, a solid system? Not so easily.

Which gets to our own problems ... teams love to pick on Kevin and Lauri and we make it easy enough to isolate them on D. As much as I'd like to see us be able to play 5 great defenders, we may need to do something to prevent them getting left on an island. I'd want to see at what rate they're being scored on in ISO before determining that, though, as even a crappy contest can be better than giving someone else an open shot. We can kind of ignore this when they're hitting their shots, but we can't always count on that.

JBB dusted Dean Wade off in the second half, but at the expense of Windler. I'll take it all as a sign of how badly he wanted this win, but playing these guys so sporadically is doing nobody any favors. He needs to figure out a way to use his bench to bring energy - and that's hard to do when their offensive role is stand in the corner.

I think I'd rather have Haliburton in any sort of big trade than Buddy Hield, but can't imagine why the Kings would trade him in anything less than a big Simmons-level deal.

Bullstuff wrote:The game ended up being too close for comfort - basically a coin toss in the end - although it looked like a game that could have been decided already in the 3rd quarter (in Cavs favor). If only either Love or Markkanen had hit those 3 pointers better... I'll take the win though. The team and especially naturally Allen truly did try to work for the rebounds this game and that probably made the difference.

I think you're mistaken. Markkanen was the best 3p shooter of those who shot at least two times. In fact, his 3p was the reason we won. The rest of the bunch couldn't hit threes to save their lives.

FranchisePlayer wrote:

Bullstuff wrote:The game ended up being too close for comfort - basically a coin toss in the end - although it looked like a game that could have been decided already in the 3rd quarter (in Cavs favor). If only either Love or Markkanen had hit those 3 pointers better... I'll take the win though. The team and especially naturally Allen truly did try to work for the rebounds this game and that probably made the difference.

I think you're mistaken. Markkanen was the best 3p shooter of those who shot at least two times. In fact, his 3p was the reason we won. The rest of the bunch couldn't hit threes to save their lives.

Yeah, Lauri was 2 for 2 on his 3's in the 4th, but 1 for 6 the rest of the game.

I suppose we're getting our glimpse of why Bulls fans got so frustrated with Lauri ... we can get him open looks, but we haven't figured out how to get him in a shooting rhythm.

FranchisePlayer wrote:I think you're mistaken. Markkanen was the best 3p shooter of those who shot at least two times. In fact, his 3p was the reason we won. The rest of the bunch couldn't hit threes to save their lives.

3 for 8 is a good night for Lauri this season (he shot better than he has this season). Lauri made his 3s when it mattered the most (in the fourth quarter), but he hasn't been too efficient from behind the arc. Actually quite terrible this season, since he hasn't really had a good shooting night so far. 3 for 8 isn't really good though and however you want to look at it there were actually four players who shot their 3p better than Markkanen: Barnes 3-5, Haliburton 2-6, Metu 3-6 and Hield 5-8. Yes - unfortunately none of them played for the Cavs. Markkanen making his 3s in the 4th was good though and I think he did a reasonably good job on defense.