The Cleveland Cavaliers have won a summit of 49 games so far this season, and none of them has said to what extent we should take this team than the one they made against the Celtics on Friday.
Boston led this match 25-3 before the first four minutes even checked. Even in a league where the big feedback, even huge, are relatively normal, this kind of immediate ambush should have bury the Cavs. Instead, thanks to 61 points combined by Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland and a fourth quarter of Evan Mobley clutch, Cleveland joined for a 123-116 victory – their ninth consecutive match – which should do anything except the head of n ° 1 at the eastern conference.
With 23 games to play, Cleveland now has an advance of eight games on Boston with the equality break currently in hand, making the head of nine effective games. Boston is not mathematically out of the race for No. 1, but that does not happen. Cleveland will be the seeded of the East, and this is the kind of victory that could prove to be psychologically enormous if these teams actually meet in the conference final.
After all, even if Cleveland has gone through this regular season, Boston is still the favorite to gain everything at +200, followed closely by the Thunder at +210. The Cavs are third at +650, which means that the masses do not bet, literally and figuratively, on them as a first line competitor.
Maybe the Celtics do not take the Cavs which seriously either. After Jayson Tatum buried a corner 3 to stretch Boston’s advance at 25-3 aforementioned, he had a small message for the Cavs.
I am not an expert lip reader, but it is a “Bleep * from the * beep *” from Tatum, and we would be sure to deduce that his message was deeper than this particular game. He told the Cavs that the pleasure is over, that they have had their little regular season race, but now that the serious things begin, they do not belong – not in the Boston arena, not in the Boston class, and certainly not in the conversation of high level title.
Tatum had a great game, becoming the First player in the Play-by-Play of the NBA To record 30 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in the first half. He finished with 46 points, 16 rebounds and nine assists, but his celebration was clearly premature.
Cleveland dominated Boston by 29 points from this moment.
Of course, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis did not play. The absence of Holiday left Sam Hauser to be targeted several times by Cleveland scorers. But Tatum, Derrick White and Jaylen Brown scored 99 combined points. A 22 -point lead with your two best players for 46 (Tatum) and 37 (Brown), at home, while pulling 43% of 3 as a team, is a 99% of the time.
Cleveland is simply not dead, and it is more than anything else to get out of this game, this is the storage point. The Cavs do not care what Vegas or Tatum or someone else thinks. They know that they are for real, and if the Celtics did not do it before Friday evening, they do it now.
