The Cleveland Cavaliers are playing some beautiful basketball this season, especially in their latest win against the Sacramento Kings, as they bounced them out of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse Saturday night 117-103. The Cavs now stand at 16-12 with their season record and don’t look like they’re slowing down any time soon. They are now on a new three-game win streak to boot.
NBA hoops are all about runs and streaks and the Wine and Gold had many of those in this game. They closed the first half on a 16-4 run and were up 81-52 at halftime. That’s only the second time the Cavs have scored that many points in a first half in franchise history. The other time was back in 2016 and their championship season when they beat the Portland Trail Blazers.
This new Cavs team is playing team basketball at its highest level. They had seven players score in double figures again. They also had a player score 20 points or more again. They are one of only three teams in the NBA this season to have at least one player score north of 20 points in every game, too.
The distributing of the ball, the unselfish play, the chasing after the loose balls, and getting those vital 50/50 balls are all very evident right now with this youthful team. The mix of the young, where most of the players are under the age of 24, with experienced veterans like Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio has created a really special team this season.
Similarly to their start in Friday’s big win at the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Cavs got off again to a fast start and were up 36-23 at the end of the first quarter. The defense was outstanding by the Wine and Gold in limiting the Kings to 38 percent shooting in the first quarter.
After the first half, the Cavaliers struggled a bit more down the stretch as the Kings eked their way back to within eight points a few times late, but a couple of three-point makes by the savvy veteran Rubio put an end to any miracle comeback by Sacramento.
There were so many excellent performances by Cavalier players in this team win. It is becoming a difficult task to limit the one stud award to just one Cavalier, but we’ll try our best.
Cavs stud: Isaac Okoro
This one stud for the win against the Kings could have gone to probably three or four other players. However, we’re going with Isaac Okoro. Like others, I’ve been critical of Okoro’s play this year and what exactly his contributions have been, especially being in the starting lineup. He’s played great defense in his short career, but the points haven’t been there this season with any consistency.
In this game, Okoro was outstanding right out of the gate. He was super aggressive on both sides of the court. He was driving between double teams to the rim to get to the foul line. He put up three layups and knocked down an outside three-pointer to end the first quarter with 11 points, which is more than he usually gets in any game.
In the second half, he cooled off offensively but still got a couple more baskets to go down including a fastbreak dunk he made on a lob pass from Darius Garland. He finished with a season-high 20 points on the night. He also added four rebounds, three assists and stole two passes.
Okoro now has scored consecutive season-highs in points as he added 16 points in the previous game against the Timberwolves. Hopefully, he has discovered something offensively that he can keep the scoring in double digits going. I certainly love seeing the youngster be aggressive and go to the basket to try and draw contact and get to the free throw line.
There were several other excellent performances by Cavs players that don’t want to go unnoticed. Cavs point guard Darius Garland set a career-high with 13 assists in the game to go along with his 16 points. Garland’s been improving in that department a lot this year. The lob passes he’s feeding to his big men in Jarrett Allen and rookie Evan Mobley have been a treat to watch.
Mobley had a great game as well in the win. He fished with 15 points and 15 boards. His ability to create issues for his opponents on both sides of the ball is so impressive. Allen again had a great game, another double-double with 19 points and 11 rebounds to go along with three more blocks and two steals.
Not to be forgotten, Cedi Osman and the aforementioned Ricky Rubio had great games coming off the bench. Osman was off the charts in the closing minutes of the first half as he was knocking down three-pointers and finished with 18 points in only 12 minutes. He didn’t score in the second half but that first half out of this world production was great.
And Rubio nailed two huge late-game three-pointers to help close out the game for the Cavaliers as well. He finished with a big 15 points on the night.
Cavs dud: Lauri Markkanen
All of the Cavs that played in the game had their good moments and that’s why trying to identify a dud on the night was difficult, but we’re going to go with big man Lauri Markkanen. He was off on his shooting touch all evening.
He went only one-for-eight from the floor. He added a couple of assists and stole the ball twice but just seemed to not be playing his best game. He got called for a couple of early third-quarter fouls as well and eventually fouled out of the game late. That all is very uncharacteristic of him.
Markkanen has played in 19 games this year and the three points were the least he’s contributed so far. He’s averaging 14.2 points this season. In the previous game against Minnesota, Markkanen went seven-for-eight from the three-point line and finished with 19 points, so this game was hopefully just an outliner.
In the last three games, he’s also only been putting up eight three-pointers which are down from what he had been tossing up where he was taking 10 or 12 three-point shots a night. That percentage overall of made three-pointers is down so far this year too. He was up over 40 percent on making threes last season with the Chicago Bulls and he’s hovering around 35 percent this season.
In fairness, Markkanen is adjusting to a new position at small forward, at least on the offensive end with Mobley and Allen often with him, so these sort of games can happen here and there; he should fine and just needs to keep shooting those triples.
He was brought here to put up that shot so hopefully, he’ll be back to normal when the Cavs take on the Miami Heat Monday night here in Cleveland. In his last game against the Heat, Markkanen was also having one of those few off nights. He only had six points in that one.
The good news though is that he’s not had back-to-back games of single-digit outputs.