1 stud and 1 dud for Cavs in signature win over Bucks on WED

Heading into the Cleveland Cavaliers game on Wednesday against the Milwaukee Bucks, I honestly expected this to be a game where Milwaukee could potentially pull away as the contest progressed. That’s even with the Cavaliers having won eight of their last 10 games.

The Cavs were the underdogs to the defending NBA champs here, and with Jarrett Allen having been a gametime decision it seemed because of illness, I wasn’t sure what kind of game we’d see from him, even if he were able to go. Allen missed Monday’s close win for Cleveland over the New York Knicks, for context.

The start of Wednesday’s game was a tough one, particularly defensively, for the Cavaliers, as the Bucks were red-hot from the three-point line, and were getting some money looks from the corners in catch-and-shoot situations. Milwaukee rode their hot shooting to a 35-point first quarter, after which they held a nine-point lead.

To a large extent, from there, though, the Wine and Gold had their way, and were making things really difficult on Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday and company. The Cavs rebounded with a big-time second quarter of their own with 39 points then, and would take a 65-57 lead heading into halftime.

From there, the Wine and Gold would ride the work of Evan Mobley and their defense the rest of the way, and ultimately landed a signature win to this point, 115-99 over the Bucks.

The Cavs have had other big-time Ws, sure; this one just had more to it. And Cleveland would jump Milwaukee to go to fourth in the Eastern Conference standings as a result, too, then bump to third even, and it was clearly a team effort against one of the premier teams in the NBA.

Mobley had 16 points, and while there were some tough possessions for him in the scoring sense, he get to the foul line seven times, hitting five, and his defense was exceptional. The dude had a heck of a jam over Antetokounmpo that was a momentum-builder as well.

The likes of Allen and Isaac Okoro did solid defensive work too, and while he had three fouls and played just 14 minutes, I thought Dean Wade in another start in place of Lauri Markkanen did still do fine, and had 10 points in a matchup Cleveland likely wouldn’t play him starters minutes anyway.

Additionally, although he would play limited minutes in the second half and left to go to the locker room during then before coming back a bit because of reportedly a tweaked back, Darius Garland was great when he was in. In his 26 minutes, he had 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including 2-of-3 from three, and had eight assists, and appeared to find more ways to be more effective with Holiday on him than the first game this season against him.

Hopefully the Cavs can manage that back issue moving forward for Garland, and three full days of rest ahead can help; we’ll see if he misses a few games to come.

But as far as the key to this W over the Bucks, and an area that underwhelmed a bit, we’ll dive into those here, for the squad overall.

On that note, we’ll get into the Cavs stud and dud from this signature W over the Bucks on Wednesday.

Even with us not necessarily hinting at it yet, the stud for the Cavaliers, winners of three straight, here was the bench.