2023-24 Season | Game #57 | Mavericks @ Cavaliers | Feb. 27, 2024 | 7:00 p.m.

Dr No said:

Any Garland flat out ran through Green on a 3 point attempt. Refs sucked equally

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Ooooh. You know, that did look like a foul, which would have been awful.

Damn, did they just say fuck it and tried to give one back to the Mavs by not calling the foul for DG i wonder?

Either way the refs have been a travesty this year.

jjvors said:

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Wasn’t a version of this song played with Miracle of Richfield radio highlights from Joe Tait. ??

The only thing this game was missing is a Spanish-speaking announcer calling that final shot.

Cavs deserved to lose but the basketball gods were with us. 99 times out of a hundred that heave misses. And Mitchell banked in a lucky 3-pointer with 29 seconds left. Not to mention the Mavs screwed up a routine inbound pass after a Cavs' field goal that cost them 3 points.

The Cavs tried to lose every which way they could. Mitchell committed a turnover off the dribble with 48 seconds left and the Cavs up by 2 which led to a fast break layup. Then with 29 seconds left he badly missed a 3 that hit glass and banked in. Then Garland gets doubled with 9 seconds left and fails to pass out of it, forcing the Cavs to use their final timeout. Then they screwed up the inbounds pass with 9 seconds left.

Dallas ball with 8 seconds and the Cavs need to force a contested shot but they give up a dunk with 3 seconds to go. They needed to have Allen or Mobley on Luka but they put LeVert on him - their worst defender. The result was a blow by and easy dunk to win the game for Dallas. But Strus' lucky heave bailed out Mitchell, Mobley, and everybody else.

The key to the win was after Strus' first 3-pointer with 3:42 to go that cut the Dallas lead to 7, one of their players took the ball out. It looked like he wanted Kyrie to inbound the ball so he threw it to Kyrie, who was on his way off the court. Kyrie caught the ball just before stepping over the end line and was called for being out of bounds. Strus then hit a corner 3 off the inbound. Those six points in 2 seconds put the Cavs right back in the game.

I've never seen that happen before where a player was trying to give the ball to a teammate to inbound and threw it to him before he got out of bounds. Talk about lucky; that play, plus Mitchell's bank shot, plus Strus' heave. The gods just wanted the Cavs to have this one.

Tlyons said:

Ooooh. You know, that did look like a foul, which would have been awful.

Damn, did they just say fuck it and tried to give one back to the Mavs by not calling the foul for DG i wonder?

Either way the refs have been a travesty this year.

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Upon rewatch I'm not sure Green didn't flop there but it was definitely too close for comfort.

We never win games like this.

The banked Mitchell 3. The stupid turnovers. The fucking inbounding turnover at the most important time.

Strus God saved us.

Cavs on the NBA stat boards:

POINTS​

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THREE POINTERS MADE​

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Some fascinating stats tonight for the eight players with 20+ minutes (Wade had only 9):

35 assists on 44 shots, Evan (!) and Garland 7 each, Ice Vert Strus and Don 4-6 each.

Rebounds 47-36 Cavaliers. Allen and Mobley 9 each, everyone else but Garland 4-7. Cavaliers have rightly been criticized for lackluster rebounds other than bigs in the past few years but everybody pitched in.

Shooting: Don 20 attempts, rest of the starters & Vert 9-12, Niang and Ice 4/6 and 3/5. Don & Max made 7 threes, Ice & Niang 2, Vert and Garland 1.

I love how we’re balancing shots, rebounds and assists. We’re a long way from a finished product but the team emphasis is visible.

Turnovers Cavaliers 16-5. Had we lost, this was the reason. Donovan had seven. He’s been very sloppy lately and needs to clean that shit up.

This rotation needs more time playing together and some of the issues will get cleaned up. Starting lineup still doesn’t mesh as well as we’d all like to see.

The Cavs had 16 turnovers to the Mavericks 5. Darius was 2-for-10 and missed two free throws that turned out to be huge at the end.

But there was a lot to like. The Cavs hit 53% from the field and 50% on 3's. Mitchell had a line of 31/7/6, but committed 7 turnovers. Allen had 19 points on just 9 shots. The bench was outstanding for once; Niang was a +17, LeVert a +16, and Okoro a +12. Strus, of course, practically won the game by himself in the 4th quarter and finished with 21 points, hitting 7-of-10 from deep.

Maybe this will get him going. He was hitting just 33.3% of his 3's coming in - well below his career average.

The Mavericks hit 52.7% and 42.4%, but I can't fault the Cavs' defense. Doncic just made some incredible shots falling backward off one foot with a hand in his face. He's also an incredible passer. He had 45 points, 14 assists, 9 rebounds, and 3 steals. If he's not the best player in the NBA - show me who is.

I'm thankful for the win but realistically the Cavs did not play well enough to win. They need to get a lot better if they want to get to the second round this year.

The Cavs have been struggling since the last couple games before the All-star game, and I don't think I have been to this forum since. It really bums me out when they lose. Tonight, though, Max got me scrambling for my laptop, and here I am! (Yeah, I am a bit late -- watched it on tape delay.)

2 For The Brew said:

Some fascinating stats tonight for the eight players with 20+ minutes (Wade had only 9):

35 assists on 44 shots, Evan (!) and Garland 7 each, Ice Vert Strus and Don 4-6 each.

Rebounds 47-36 Cavaliers. Allen and Mobley 9 each, everyone else but Garland 4-7. Cavaliers have rightly been criticized for lackluster rebounds other than bigs in the past few years but everybody pitched in.

Shooting: Don 20 attempts, rest of the starters & Vert 9-12, Niang and Ice 4/6 and 3/5. Don & Max made 7 threes, Ice & Niang 2, Vert and Garland 1.

I love how we’re balancing shots, rebounds and assists. We’re a long way from a finished product but the team emphasis is visible.

Turnovers Cavaliers 16-5. Had we lost, this was the reason. Donovan had seven. He’s been very sloppy lately and needs to clean that shit up.

This rotation needs more time playing together and some of the issues will get cleaned up. Starting lineup still doesn’t mesh as well as we’d all like to see.

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This was the best our offense has looked in a while. We still went through periods of stagnation, but the high assist numbers were encouraging

Mitchell can't just die on these inbounding situations. He couldn't get open and signaled to Mobley to throw it the other way.

Bro you gotta keep fighting to get open.

It's interesting that Mobley was on the bench down the stretch even though he finished with 12 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists (wow!), and a steal in 28 minutes. Evan scored the first two buckets of the 4th quarter and added two free throws but was taken out with 6:48 left and didn't come back in until there were 29 seconds left for defensive purposes.

When he went out the Cavs were down by 2 points. Two minutes and 10 seconds later they were down by 10.