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Varejao picks up slack; Cavs cruise past Knicks in laugher 93 - 124
MArch 1, 2010
On the same day Shaquille O'Neal underwent thumb surgery, his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates did some operating of their own. There was some precision cutting to the basket, a few heart-racing alley-oop dunks at the rim, and an entire night in which the Cavs offered visiting New York a taste of its own run-and-gun medicine, making the Knicks look like they were without a pulse. In the end, the Cavs were in stitches, having carved out a laugher of a 124-93 victory Monday. It included leads of 74-48 at halftime and 101-59 at the end of the third quarter. "After getting up big our guys did a good job of staying focused and coming out in the third to try to put the game away," said Cavs coach Mike Brown. "So give everyone in our locker room credit for stringing 48 good minutes together. That's something we've been talking about wanting to do lately." Earlier in the day, O'Neal had surgery on his right thumb, the result of an injury suffered in last week's win in Boston. He is expected to miss up to eight weeks, meaning the Cavs' large offseason acquisition may not return until the start of the playoffs in mid-April. "He feels like he let us down, but we understand injuries happen in the game," said Cavs forward Jamario Moon. "I think he's really down about being out. ... He let us know it's time to continue playing basketball and he's going to be all right." O'Neal's injury came one week after the Cavs traded longtime center Zydrunas Ilgauskas to Washington for forward Antawn Jamison, leaving the team with a gaping hole in the middle. The Cavs currently have just one player taller than 6-foot-10 to man the pivot, and there's no guarantee Anderson Varejao is actually his listed height of 6-foot-11. So the Cavs (47-14) were almost more like the smallish Knicks (20-39) than the smallish Knicks themselves. Then again, while Varejao may not be a center in the traditional sense, he more than ably filled in for O'Neal on this night.
Part of that had to do with the fact the Knicks' big men barely put up any resistance, part of it had to do with the fact there's not a whole lot that rattles the fun-loving, always-energetic Varejao. Some call it skill, some call it luck, some just call it wild. No matter, it worked for Varejao, who finished with 14 points on 7-for-9 shooting and a team-high 10 rebounds. Most of those stats came in the first 24 minutes, too. Among the highlights for Varejao:
• A straight-on skyhook from 12-feet that banked in.
• A one-handed runner in the lane that was shot off the wrong foot, but went in anyway.
• An offensive rebound in traffic in which Varejao soared from one side of the key to the other, snagging the ball by using only his left bicep and forearm.
• Two reverse layups that took place as Varejao waited for a rebound under the basket, but instead received a pass. So he casually took the ball and flipped it up over his head and through the net. "He may not get the recognition because he doesn't score a lot of points, but the people who don't vote for him for Sixth Man of the Year are the people who aren't watching basketball," Brown said. "He impacts the game as well as anyone." All that, and Varejao wasn't even the star of the night.
That honor again belonged to LeBron James, who was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month for the sixth consecutive time prior to tip-off. Anybody who watched James pick apart the Knicks understands why. James finished with 22 points, seven rebounds and seven assists, despite not playing one second of the fourth quarter. He also had a couple of steals and a couple of blocks, proving that defense still matters to James and the Cavs. "I'm a winner, I just want to win," James said. "I have yet to play for a team that didn't like defense in my career." Jamison and J.J. Hickson added 17 points apiece; Jamison also grabbed 12 rebounds and Hickson, who started at center and made nine of 10 shots, finished with nine.
The Cavs dominated inside and out, out-rebounding the Knicks by a 60-31 margin and outscoring them in the paint, 66-32. The Cavs also shot 56 percent (51-for-90) from the floor. "They outclassed us, outmatched us and outplayed us," said Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni. "Obviously, they're a better team than we are." Bill Walker came off the bench to lead the Knicks with 21 points. Meanwhile, Tracy McGrady was held to six points, just a few nights after scoring 23 in a victory over Washington -- the Knicks' lone win in their six games since he joined the team. "You gotta have pride and you gotta keep competing," McGrady said, shaking his head. "It's really embarrassing. It's tough, it's frustrating."