Cavs: 1 stud, 1 dud from comeback win over Celtics
Cavs: 1 dud from comeback win over Celtics – The entire offense as a whole
The Cleveland Cavaliers scored nine points in the first quarter. That’s it – just nine points. In fact, a Darius Garland pullup shot gave them nine points with 7:16 remaining in the quarter, and they promptly went scoreless the rest of the quarter. Some of that was a tough Celtics defense, but much of it was just bad offense.
It continued in the second quarter, and the Cavs had just 38 points at halftime. The most points they scored in a single quarter all game was 29. While Garland, Ricky Rubio, Osman and Mobley all had moments, at the end of the game the Cavs won scoring just 91 points.
Cleveland shot just 38.2 percent from the field and 26.3 percent from long-range. They couldn’t find penetration for much of the game, and had to settle for scoring on low-percentage jumpers in the second half. They had only 17 assists as a team as many of those jumpers came in isolation.
The defense absolutely stepped up, and it got the Cavs a huge comeback. win. The Celtics are a really tough defensive team. Yet the Cavs got lucky in this one; they aren’t going to be able to win with such an anemic offensive performance very often this year.
Next. 3 big questions for team off to their best start in years. dark
This article could have been “5 studs from the comeback win” as Ricky Rubio was key to unlocking the offense in the second half, Osman was awesome, and Darius Garland was the only thing keeping them afloat in the first half. The crowd at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse was tremendous. This was a really good win over a good Boston team and it is yet another piece of evidence that this Cleveland team is different, and better, than what we expected.