1 stud and 1 dud for Cavs from New Year’s Eve win over Bulls

In their past three games, with the first two concluding their six-game homestand, the Cleveland Cavaliers did not have the performances they were looking for.

Cleveland was thrashed by the Toronto Raptors last Friday night, leading to the starters being benched eventually, and despite a comeback effort, the Cavaliers were done in by a slow start against Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets on Monday night. In that outing, Darius Garland had a 46-point explosion, and the Cavs did make things somewhat interesting down the stretch, but Kyrie Irving and Brooklyn were just too much, and the Cavs’ typically stingy defense in these two games was anything but for most of them.

So, on Thursday night, one had to be hoping to see the Cavaliers start better at the Indiana Pacers, who are a young club that have played with tons of energy this season, and have probably fared better than plenty could’ve anticipated heading into the year thus far.

Unfortunately, Cleveland couldn’t contain the scorching hot Pacers, who canned 21 threes, and Cleveland couldn’t keep up down the stretch in a run-n-gun style of game.

On Saturday night, the Cavaliers were attempting to rebound in the last game of the 2022 portion of the schedule on the road at the Chicago Bulls.

In a game that was picking up a bit in the second quarter, the contest was very choppy in the second half, and in the game, neither the Cavs nor Bulls were particularly on from beyond the arc. The Cavaliers did end up hitting 13 threes, but shot 34.2 percent, and Chicago was just seven-of-21 from three, a 33.3 percent hit rate.

Credit should go to the Cavs, though, as they did enough defensively throughout the game to help generate easy buckets in spurts. Also, contributions and hustle plays from Cedi Osman (12 points and was a plus-nine), Isaac Okoro (11 points) and some productive Raul Neto minutes shouldn’t be discounted.

And while offensively has been hit-or-miss in a lower usage role as a starter for Lamar Stevens, who had just two points on one-of-six shooting, he made things difficult for DeMar DeRozan consistently, and conceded only two points to DeRozan in primary coverage.

So getting further into it, let’s get into our Cavs stud and dud from this NYE matchup with the Bulls.

First up, we’ll take a closer look at the Cavs’ standout from Saturday night.