1 stud and 1 dud in Cleveland Cavaliers’ big win at Miami Heat
By John Suchan
The Cleveland Cavaliers‘ season is streaking along as they picked up another symbolic win, this one against the Miami Heat, a team the Cavs hadn’t beaten down in Miami in 11 years. 20 straight contests down in South Beach resulted in Cleveland losses. The current Cavs players were mostly still in elementary school at that time. That’s pretty fun to this writer, who was also a former elementary school teacher back in the day.
Cleveland dominated Miami and won convincingly 111-85. The Cavs now stand at 12-10 on the young season and this year is certainly starting to feel much different than the previous three. The addition of rookie sensation and 7-foot big man Evan Mobley has made a huge difference to this team’s opportunities moving forward. You now add in free-agent signee 7-footer Lauri Markkanen with the Cavs’ other big man Jarrett Allen and this team is giving opponents nightmares on a daily basis with this trio of big fellas.
The Cavs have excellent bigs who have helped them to a great start to the season and a big win in Miami. 1 stud, 1 dud from a record-breaking victory.
In this game with the Heat, the Cavs ran out early and led 61-43 at the break. Allen had 13 points at that point and yet Evan Mobley had zero points. However, Mobley already had four blocks at the half and was altering his opponents’ decisions all the time with his defense both inside and outside at the three-point arc. The blocks by Mobley helped Cleveland get to 14 of them by the end of the game. That team stat is now 11th all-time in Cleveland history for one game. The record is 21, which was set back in 1992. I get a sneaky suspicion that that record may soon fall with this trio of talent protecting their basketball rim.
There were several outstanding performances on the night by many Wine and Gold players. With such a lopsided victory it was difficult to find any subpar performances. Let’s look back at a historic night in Miami, and some of those outstanding outputs by this very confident team.