One stud and one dud in Cavs win over OKC on Saturday
By Corey Casey
It wasn’t pretty, and even more so considering who they were playing in the Oklahoma City Thunder, and given the circumstances, was likely the Cleveland Cavaliers’ sloppiest game of the year. What difference a year makes.
The Cavs are at a point where moral victories just aren’t important anymore. The best thing you can say about this game on Saturday night is they got a win, and in the end, that’s all that matters. It certainly felt like the Cavaliers played down to their competition, though.
What the win means is the Wine and Gold improve to 28-19 and are able to stay at the #5 seed in the Eastern Conference. Unfortunately, Cleveland suffered more bad luck in this game on the injury front as Lauri Markkanen left after 13 minutes in what looked to be a rough ankle sprain. Per a report from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, X-rays were negative, but it was a high ankle sprain; we’ll find out more after further tests.
Markkanen is one of the key acquisitions that now-Cavs President of Basketball Operations Koby Altman made in the offseason and is a big part of what the Cavaliers do. It also looked like he was finding his stroke from deep again before the injury, and has been on-point in recent weeks.
Circling back, this again was a really sloppy game that the Cavaliers really had to gut out. For a moment it looked like the Cavs would pull away and turn this into a blowout as they went up by 17 in the fourth quarter. The Thunder were able to cut it to 10 at the end of the fourth and as little as 6 with a little over 5 minutes left. The game was a lot closer than it should’ve been and some of it was the Cavaliers playing down to their competition.
After the game, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff wasn’t very happy with his teams’ effort and the way they played, based on how he seemed in media availability. That’s understandable, considering missed free throws and turnovers were what gave the Thunder a fighting chance in the fourth.
The Cavs shot 18-of-35 from the free throw line (51.4 percent) and had 22 turnovers in this game, which the Thunder turned into 17 points. So, it was understandable why Bickerstaff was unhappy with his team.
With that said, here is one stud and one dud from the Cavs 94-87 win versus the Thunder.