Cleveland Cavaliers: What we learned vs. Phoenix Suns

Here’s what we learned from the Cleveland Cavaliers’ rout of the Phoenix Suns.

The Cleveland Cavaliers ran over the Phoenix Suns en route to a 120-95 win on Friday night.

This was the first time we were able to see close to a full team play together. Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr., and Tristan Thompson returned to the lineup after returning from their various injuries.

LeBron James remains the star of the show no matter who’s in the lineup. He finished the game with 27 points, nine assists, six boards, a steal, and a block in under 30 minutes of play.

Kevin Love was phenomenal once again since returning to the lineup. He put up 20 points and six boards. Larry Nance Jr. looked strong in his return putting up 15 points and 10 rebounds.

It’s hard to make too many determinations after this game. The Suns are a bad team that are actively tanking. But there were still positives to take away from the win.

Here’s what we learned from the win.

Kevin Love continues to shine.

Love hasn’t missed a beat since coming back from his injury. Once again he put up over 20 points en route to a victory.

The Cavs deadline moves have often been looked at through the lens of how the new players help LeBron. What gets lost is how each player also accents Love’s game as well.

Love sliding into the secondary scorer role surrounded by high level role players has gone better than most would have expected.

LeBron continues to be amaze.

Every night LeBron gives us a couple plays that take our breath away. Friday night he gave us two of those plays.

The first such play was a long touchdown pass he completed to Jose Calderon. The crazy part was how he caught the rebound and threw it all in one motion.

The second was this absurd spin move out of a double-team leading to an and-one.

We’ve watched LeBron do stuff like this for 15 years, but it still never gets old.

Kevin Love and Larry Nance Jr. is a dangerous combination.

We were able to see Love and Nance share the floor together for the first time and it did not disappoint. The duo shared the floor for 19 minutes and posted an offensive rating of 123.0, a defensive rating of 84.5, and a net rating of 38.4.

This combination, especially when combined with LeBron, has the ability to be lethal as shown in Friday night’s game. Love’s ability to space the fly combined with Nance’s ability to finish at the rim is going to give opposing front courts nightmares.

The Cavs only have 10 games left to figure everything out. But showings like this show that this team actually has pieces that fit together. Whether or not they will be able to put it all together for the playoffs remains to be seen.

The Cavs will look to push their winning streak to five straight as they travel to Brooklyn to take on the Nets Sunday afternoon.

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