2 studs, 1 dud for Cavs in #7-8 play-in loss to Nets on Tuesday

Tuesday night the Cleveland Cavaliers played in their first game of the play-in tournament, with them having two opportunities to make the postseason with them initially the eighth seed. They fell short in their efforts as the star power of the Brooklyn Nets was too much to overcome in what was a 115-108 loss for Cleveland. The Cavs will play the winner of the Charlotte Hornets and Atlanta Hawks for the battle for the 8th seed.

Former Cav Kyrie Irving torched the Cavaliers for 34 points shooting a scorching 12/15 from the floor to go with 12 assists. Kevin Durant dropped a casual 25 points, 11 assists, 3 blocks and 2 steals. Bruce Brown dropped an unusual near triple-double pouring in 18 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists.

The Nets jumped out to a first quarter 20-point lead scoring 40 in the period to the Cavaliers’ 20. The Cavs were able to crawl back multiple times but once again it is clear that the Cavs missed All-star Jarrett Allen‘s presence inside, and the team now fell to 9-18 in games played without Allen.

With that said, there were two guys who played very well for the Cavs here, and we’ll get into that more here.

The Cavaliers standout was Darius Garland.

Cavs Stud #1: Darius Garland

Garland led the team in scoring doing everything he could offensively contributing 34 points on 13/24 shooting and 5 assists. Garland played aggressively taking it to the hoop often throughout the game getting good looks at the rim, and went 3/6 from three-point land.

Now, he had some trouble to start out the contest, and was seemingly pressing some in the first half, and eventually had six turnovers, but he eventually settled into things, and it ended up being a heck of a first taste of essentially postseason play for the emerging star.

From there, it was nice to see Kevin Love make his presence felt.

Cavs Stud #2: Kevin Love

Love played in his usual 6th man role and led the team in rebounds, with13, to go with his 14 points. Love knocked down 3 of his 4 triple attempts and had a plus-minus of plus-10, which was also a Cavaliers lead.

Love was coming off his monster game to close the regular season, in which he hit 8 threes in just 15 minutes scoring 31, albeit against a Milwaukee Bucks squad that was not really playing its big contributors.

Now, unfortunately for the Wine and Gold, there were two guys that had some pretty rough outings. I decided to basically consider them as being the one stud here, with one not playing much.

Cavs Dud: Isaac Okoro/Cedi Osman

Isaac Okoro started for the Cavs and finished the game with only 13 minutes played. This was due to his awful start to the game, and on the night, he ended up bricking all 3 of his shot attempts and finishing with 2 fouls, 1 rebound, and 1 assist.

Since he hardly played, there just is not much here to talk about; you would of liked to see him being able to lock up Irving some. He had much more success in that regard in Cleveland’s loss to Brooklyn on Friday night, but we know how talented, and clutch, Irving is.

Meanwhile, Cedi Osman got the bulk of the Okoro minutes and he hardly did better. Osman, who strung together a streak of DNPs at one during the years’ closing stretch, but did get back in the rotation eventually, hardly did better than Okoro. He played 20 minutes, and had only 2 points, 4 rebounds, and 1 assist.

Since they combined for 33 minutes I decided to stick them together as 1 collective dud rather than 2 separate ones because they were collectively so bad I thought they didn’t deserve the solo recognition.

We’ll see if the Cavaliers can potentially bounce back on Friday night home at home versus either the Hornets or Hawks for the chance to take on the top-seeded Miami Heat in Round 1.