DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Cavs and NBA discussion continued...

7 wins to go..

Definitely

Probabaly gonna be a sweep.

Carroll is probabaly out the rest of this series, and the world noes Milsap can't guard Lebron.

Hope their guy is alright. Hate to see someone go down like that. Glad we won, now let's get game 2.

Watched the 3rd and 4th quarters tonight (hey, I have to sleep sometime).

Hell yes!

-GO CAVS!

GO CAVS!

They said that his knee *might* not be as bad as initially though ..... but that still looked really bad to me.

Watched the whole game tonight and started to get a little worried there at the beginning with the way Atlanta was playing. Then that was absolutely wonderful in the second half how we pretty much blew them out of the building. Glad we won game 1, we need to keep up the intensity though because Atlanta has the ability to beat us if we play dumb.

We need 2nd quarter Lebron and 3rd Quarter JR at all times.

I actually felt confident after the first quarter, ATL was almost shooting 70% and it was a tie game! and no one shoots 70% the whole game..

I did get nervous towards the end.. The 18 point lead shrunk to 6 quickly..

I thought we were going to be hearing about the heroics of Kent freakin Bazemore..

But eventually LeBron decided to actually do something on his 8th straight Shot clock eating ISO play..

Everytime the Cavs play they increase my confidence that they can win this championship!


Go Cavs!!!

2 things :

Sam Amico @SamAmicoFSO
Cavs' LeBron James tells @FOXSportsOH he didn't like how he closed out Game 1 win over Hawks: "I allowed them back in it with my nonsense."

Atlanta Hawks ✔ @ATLHawks
Coach Bud says doctors told him DeMarre has a knee sprain and will have an MRI tomorrow.

Why was I against the J.R. Smith trade?

For the same reason I, and so many others were ...... because he was reported to be a poor teammate, a shot chucker who refused to play within the offense, a guy who refused to play defense, and a guy who preferred to party to prepare ...... and who also had a temper that he could not control all too often.

Then he came to Cleveland to be the backup SG, wound up playing well in the starting role so he started ....... then he got suspended, and Shumpert wound up being left in the starting role, so Smith decided to be the best 6th man ......

His attitude has largely been excellent. His work ethic has been tremendous, and he has been an incredible teammate. In short, he has been most of what he was not in NY, for whatever reason.

I am glad that I was wrong about him. I loved the trade for Shumpert, but had no clue why we wanted Smith as well. I think that I saw it reported that we had to take him to get the 1st round pick in that trade .....

If only we could have such awful provisions on all of our trades.

LeBron: "In the fourth quarter, I played way too much isolation basketball... I will do a better job."

His talent is still the same, but getting out of that train wreck in New York has changed him.

Moz outplayed Horford. Atlanta is in serious trouble.

They were in trouble before the series ever started. Something happened to their offense in the fourth quarter of the season. Also, if Carroll can't play (and it doesn't look like he will), then they have no one to guard LeBron for long stretches.

cfrs - I enjoy reading a lot of your posts, but this has to be one of my favorite quotes I have *ever* seen on this board.

Double doubles for both our big guys. TT just abused that Millsap (sp) guy. JR Unstoppable, man can that guy pull the trigger from downtown.

Kyrie defense is... not much better than his offense. I'm not opposed to sitting him tomorrow's game. Clearly he's not 100% or he tweaked again one of his injuries. Sit him, see how he feels going into the game after.

Great start to pull out a win at their house! Not being cruel, but their injured player Carroll is going to make this series easier for us to take!

I smell 2-0 coming back to Cleveland....

man, imagine how good this team would be if we had Love or Kyrie.

'When in doubt, shoot the ball,' - Jan 7th, 2015

Atlanta just plays really slow compared to how they usually play. There's no rhythm or tempo. It's all bogged down to a half court pace.

Just a few notes ...

- I hope the Carroll injury doesn't become the de-facto excuse for media pundits if the Cavs win this series. Some of them kept bringing up "injuries" as the reason why Chicago struggled against us, as if we didn't lose Kevin Love and Andy V to season ending injuries and Kyrie might as well be playing in a wheelchair. Not to mention, just about everyone else on the team has some sort of minor injury.

- We need the Lebron that showed up in the 2nd quarter to show up for the rest of the post season. NOT that 4th quarter version of Lebron that makes me want to throw things at the TV.

- As much as the media wants to try to make this a "It's Lebron carrying his team to victory" narrative again, I think it's the bench has really stepped up. TnT is playing like a man looking to get paid. JR Smith was out of his mind yesterday (In the good way). Shump has been grinding away on defense. Delly had a bad shooting game (and a couple of bad turnovers), but he has one of the highest +/- numbers of anyone on the team. I think the team really rallies around his defensive effort for some reason and next thing you notice, there's one of those "The other team hasn't scored in XX minutes" graphics on the screen.

Absolutely. All the Cavs need to be in any game is for LeBron to just be LeBron, Kyrie to be 80% of Kyrie and either Shumpert or JR to have a good shooting night... when it's a great shooting night like JR had last night, the Cavs should win.

As for Carroll getting hurt.. hate to see it happen but was kind of glad on the replay that it was a non-contact injury and not the result of really anything the Cavs did...

Yeah, exactly. My wife came in late in the game and I mentioned the injury. Her first question was, "It wasn't because the Cavs did anything dirty right?" ... I was like, "No, we're not the Celtics".

I remember NBATv saying Lerbon owned Carroll last night. Is he the best at guarding him (even though he wasn't doing very well)?

I know Isaiah Thomas was clowning Milsap's attempts to guard Lebron last night. Lebron would take him outside and then blow by him.

Milsap looked like a deer in headlights trying to guard Lebron outside the arc. It just takes 1 screen and Lebron is gonna charge past him every time. There's no real defense for it. They'll probably have Milsap guard whoever is cold shooting that night. Lebron was just being stupid during that stretch. I blame Blatt and his teammates too. Della should have been trying to set screens. Teague would NOT stop a full charging Lebron unless he fouled every time.

If you're going to be cocky, and smile and laugh when a guy guards you..

You should probably at least score.

An ideal situation would be a sweep and the Rockets take the Warriors to 6 games. Get Irving as much rest as possible. I think the Cavs could beat the Warriors without Love but with a healthy James and Irving. The Cavs are likely not getting a healthy Irving until next year. But I have to imagine that any rest would be helpful at this point. I think it's going to be tough to beat the Warriors with Irving at half strength. LeBron will have to play other worldly.

DC, I thought the replay was going to show LeBron kind of pushing Carroll. Was glad nothing like that actually occurred.

Regardless of what happens, the finals don't start until June 4th. If we sweep guys would get a TON of rest.

DeMarre Carroll's MRI revealed bone bruise and no structural damage, league source tells @CBSSports. He's day -to-day.

Wow, that's good news for him. The way he reacted, I though he blew out several ligaments.

My prediction stands:

Warriors win in 5
Cavs win in 6

Warriors win in 7

Tremendous news for him, although I cannot see him able to do much for a least a couple games.

A bone bruise on the knee is no joke when you have to run constantly, especially on a court, where your knees already take a beating.

Man, I just watched the replay of Lebron driving with 20 seconds, and Korver just bailed in a panic as Lebron came charging.

In response to Korver "bailing" I was laughing as well ... that freight train was rollin down the tracks

You cant see it in a few of the replays but Bazemore bailed twice as hard as Korver. He was under the rim at one point and was out almost to the three point line by the time Lebron dunked it.

Korver got out of the way quickly.

lebron dunk