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Cavs buckle down late to shut down Raptors 100 - 108
January 19, 2010
Defense wasn't exactly the name of the game, but the Cleveland Cavaliers clamped down when they had to. It really was as simple as that in the Cavs' 108-100 win over the visiting Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night. Of course, the offense wasn't too shabby, either. Not when you consider the Cavs had as many points at the end of the third quarter (91) as they did in their previous game against the Raptors way back on Oct. 28. That was the season's second game, a time when the Cavs were still trying to find themselves following the offseason addition of Shaquille O'Neal. They dropped that one -- but on Tuesday, Shaq and the Cavs hardly looked lost. They started off by getting it done on offense, scoring 62 points in the first half. Then came the game's final 3:15, when the Cavs (32-11) held the Raptors (21-21) without a single field goal. In other words, what looked to be a sprint to the finish line ended up being a race between a tortoise and a hare. But no matter what you call it, what mattered most to the Cavs was that they buckled down on defense when the game was on the line, and did so without surrendering any offense. Now, they are 25-1 when scoring 100 or more points.
"It was the tale of two halves," said Cavs coach Mike Brown. "We felt offensively we were getting good looks and sharing the ball in the first half. What we were lacking in the first half was a physical presence. That's not who we are and it's not who we want to be. But in the second half, we shored that area up." As for O'Neal, things were considerably different than the first meeting. Rather than focusing on trying to defend the Raptors' arsenal of sharp-shooting big men (Chris Bosh, Andrea Bargnani and Hedo Turkoglu), Shaq placed the onus on the opposition by positioning himself near the basket and daring someone, anyone to stop him. If anyone were to have a matchup problem, Shaq seemed to say, it would not be the Cavs. Not on this night. So O'Neal worked his way to 16 points, missing just three of 10 shots. One of those baskets came early and gave him 28,000 points for his career -- making him just the fifth player in NBA history to accomplish such a feat. Defensively, O'Neal didn't block any shots, but he did block plenty of paths to the hoop. On a couple of occasions, he did so with such force that the Raptors were probably wondering if anyone got the license plate number of the diesel that just hit them. "There are no layups when Shaq is covering the glass," said Cavs forward LeBron James. "He doesn't care about putting guys on the floor."
Shaq, of course, said it's all just a matter of using up his fouls. "I have the second-best center in the East backing me up," O'Neal said of Cavs backup center Zydrunas Ilgauskas. "Earlier in my career, I never really had a backup, so I had to let some of those go. (Now) I have the great Ilgauskas backing me up, so I don't really care about fouls." Meanwhile, James just missed a triple-double with 28 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists. Cavs guard Mo Williams added 22 points and 10 assists. The Cavs finished with 27 assists on 38 baskets for the game, and are 10-0 when passing for at least 25. Bosh scored 21 points to lead the Raptors, who stayed close the entire way before fading in the final minutes. "We didn't make plays down the stretch and had a very difficult time stopping them," said Raptors coach Jay Triano. "At the end, they missed a bunch of shots but we couldn't capitalize."
Or as Bosh said, "We had a couple mishaps down the stretch and they made us pay for it." Bargnani added 19 points for the Raptors, and DeMar DeRozan and Marco Belinelli scored 14 apiece. Next up for the Cavs is the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers in a rematch of their Christmas Day game, which the Cavs won easily on the Lakers' home floor. Tip-off is Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on TNT.