JB just spent a lot of time crying in public

Like, you chase the guards all over the place and put yours hands on them up and down the court, but it's someone else's fault we were awarded so many free throws?

Hummmm. I don't agree.

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (50-32) face off against the Indiana Pacers (48-34) @ Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. (7:00 PM ET)

Fox Sports Ohio and NBA on TNT will cover tonight's game.

Both the 5 seeded Pacers and 4 seeded Cavs finished the 2017-18 NBA regular season 7-3 in their last 10 games.

The season series went in the Pacers favour at 3-1 this season, winning by an average of 4.0 points per contest (108.8-104.8).

The Cavs beat the Pacers in Game 4, 104-100. JR Smith, Kyle Korver, Jordan Clarkson, and of course, LeBron James, all had huge games.

The biggest takeaway from that game was the defense on Oladipo. He had a rough game, going for just 17 points on 5-20 shooting.

Injury Report

Cavaliers : George Hill (Back) is QUESTIONABLE.

Pacers : None to Report

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : Jose Calderon, JR Smith, Kyle Korver, LeBron James, Kevin Love

Pacers : Darren Collison, Victor Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thaddeus Young, Myles Turner

Key to the Game : Come out strong in the 3rd quarter. In the series, the Cavaliers have been outscored by 15 points in the 3rd quarter. Most likely to do with LeBron James taking a bit of a rest for the 4th. Anyhow, the Cavs have got to be better coming out of halftime.

The Wine and Gold have a 69% probability to win this game, and a 65% probability to win this series, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (50-32) face off against the Toronto Raptors (59-23) @ Air Canada Center in Toronto (8:00 PM ET).

Fox Sports Ohio and NBA on TNT will cover tonight's game.

The 1 seeded Raptors finished the 2017-18 NBA regular 6-4 in their last 10 games while the 4 seeded Cavs went 7-3.

The season series went in Cleveland's favour at 2-1 this season, even though the Raptors won by an average of 8.4 points per contest (114.3-122.7).

In their last matchup, the Cavs won 112-106. The Cavaliers did a really good job on the Raptors' star backcourt. Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan combined for just 24 points on 9-24 shooting. On the offensive end, all 5 Cavs starters scored at least 12 points on 50% shooting.

Injury Report

Cavaliers : None to Report

Raptors : None to Report

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : George Hill, JR Smith, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson

Raptors : Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, OG Anunoby, Serge Ibaka, Jonas Valanciunas

Key to the Game : Keeping Kyle Lowry in check. While on the Pacers, George Hill did a good job on Lowry defensively in their 2016 series. Lowry averaged just 13.9 PPG on 31.6% shooting in the series. Although the Raptors play more as a team now, Lowry is still the leader and shutting him down would be a huge help.

The Wine and Gold have just a 28% probability to win this game and win the series, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Seriously, our center rotation is terrible. I get that TT is unmoveable but our lack of rim protection is one of our biggest problems. Kevin Love and TT arent gonna be able to provide the defense needed in a series without help.

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (50-32) face off against the Indiana Pacers (48-34) @ Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland (1:00 PM ET).

Fox Sports Ohio and NBA on ABC will cover today's game.

Both the 5 seeded Pacers and 4 seeded Cavs finished the 2017-18 NBA regular season 7-3 in their last 10 games.

The season series went in the Pacers favour at 3-1 this season, winning by an average of 4.0 points per contest (108.8-104.8).

The Pacers beat the Cavs in Game 5, 121-87. Victor Oladipo had a brilliant game after struggling in the previous 4. He finished with 28/13/10.

Injury Report

Cavaliers : George Hill (Back) is QUESTIONABLE.

Pacers : None to Report

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : Jose Calderon, JR Smith, Kyle Korver, LeBron James, Kevin Love

Pacers : Darren Collison, Victor Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thaddeus Young, Myles Turner

Key to the Game : Have everyone show up. It's win or go home. The shooters have not been very good in this series. Kevin Love has been good on the glass but very bad everywhere else. JR Smith's defense has been good but his offence is inconsistent at best. Rodney Hood and Jeff Green have not been what was expected. The Cavs need for everyone to at least have an average game, and let LeBron James handle the rest.

The Wine and Gold have a 65% probability to win this game and win the series, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Maybe it's not the end of the world?

I lived through a juiced up Eastern Conference Finals one time where a team when nuclear for 4 games. But I doubt I'll ever relive something like that.

11.8/21.3 FG

2.5/5.5 3PT

I guess the King is motivated again. And people still question who's the best player in the league. Sigh.

Some updates and info about players that Cavs can trade for.

Marc Gasol

19.0/8.6/4.2 on 42% and 33% from 3pt

Grizzlies are bottom 9-21 right now, 2nd worst record in the West.

I'm kinda worried about Gasol's game. He's about to be 33 and he hasn't looked that great. Is it a matter of effort? If he gets traded he might play better because of motivation? In the game against us, he looked great on offense. His defense seems to be a big step away from his DPOY year.

DeAndre Jordan

10.7/14.4/1.1 on 67% (59% from FT)

People have doubts about his game against Golden State. Can he stay on the floor? He would make our rebounding and defense much much better. Big upgrade from TT. If during our win streak, our defense has been decent to good, imagine adding DJ to the mix!

Paul George

20.6/5.8/3.2 on 42% and 41% from 3pt

OKC looking bad. He might just tell Sam Presti that he isn't staying there. But would OKC want the BKN pick? They want to put pieces around Westbrook and compete (maybe they accept the pick and then they try to trade it).

But what could really make PG leave OKC would be this (from Woj): "It's unlikely that in 2 months PG13 is going to be able to say to OKC [that he is staying]..Melo is going to opt in..They'll really have to gut that roster. You're looking at a payroll of over $250mil. And if you're PG13 you're looking at how they are going to build a team around you."

If none of those trades happen, I'd at least trade our own pick (Cavs 2018) for a Center like Brook Lopez. He's been bad for the Lakers but his skillset would help us a lot in restricted minutes. He can shoot from anywhere, post up and block shots. Or even his brother, Robin Lopez. Or Noel, who's not in the Mavs plans and would be cheap to trade for.

Thoughts?

After hitting 54.2% of their shots in the Big Easy -- including 48.6% (17 of 35) from 3-point range -- the Cavs are shooting an NBA-best 52.6% from the field on the season

Sourced from this article that has a lot of good quotes from coach and about coach https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/42241475/cavaliers-top-pelicans-celebrate-franchise-first-9-0-start

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (50-32) face off against the Indiana Pacers (48-34) @ Bankers Field Lifehouse in Indiana. (8:30 PM ET)

Fox Sports Ohio and NBA on TNT will cover today's game.

Both the 5 seeded Pacers and 4 seeded Cavs finished the 2017-18 NBA regular season 7-3 in their last 10 games.

The season series went in the Pacers favour at 3-1 this season, winning by an average of 4.0 points per contest (108.8-104.8).

The Pacers beat the Cavs in Game 2, 92-90. The Cavs were up 17 points at halftime, but then blew a lead in the 3rd quarter. Bojan Bogdanovic had a huge night, canning 7 threes to go for 30 points.

The biggest takeaway from that game was the trapping on Oladipo. The Cavs sent a double team almost every time he held the ball and he didn't have the best game for himself. If the Cavs continue to do this (and hope that Indiana's role players don't catch fire), they should be fine.

Injury Report

Cavaliers : George Hill (Back) is QUESTIONABLE.

Pacers : None to Report

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : Jose Calderon, JR Smith, Kyle Korver, LeBron James, Kevin Love

Pacers : Darren Collison, Victor Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thaddeus Young, Myles Turner

Key to the Game : Attacking the rim. In the 1st half of Game 3, the Cavs repeatedly attacked the rim looking for easy layups or dunks. They were not relying on the three point shot like they usually do. The ball was moving around and guys were cutting to the rim for easy baskets. Cleveland would definitely like to do the same throughout all of Game 4.

The Wine and Gold have a 40% probability to win this game, and a 37% probability to win this series, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (50-32) face off against the Indiana Pacers (48-34) @ Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. (7:00 PM ET)

Fox Sports Ohio and NBA on TNT will cover today's game.

Both the 5 seeded Pacers and 4 seeded Cavs finished the 2017-18 NBA regular season 7-3 in their last 10 games.

The season series went in the Pacers favour at 3-1 this season, winning by an average of 4.0 points per contest (108.8-104.8).

The Pacers took Game 1, blowing out the Cavs by 18 points (98-80). Although the Cavs did alright on defense, their offense was stagnant at times and players like Jeff Green, Rodney Hood, Jordan Clarkson and others were cold.

The biggest takeaway from this game however, was turnovers. The Cavs turned the ball over 16 times, allowing a ton of transition points.

Injury Report

Cavaliers : None to Report

Pacers : None to Report

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : George Hill, Rodney Hood, LeBron James, Jeff Green, Kevin Love

Pacers : Darren Collison, Victor Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thaddeus Young, Myles Turner

Key to the Game : Getting Kevin Love some more shots. He is the definitive 2nd offensive option on the Cavs, yet he only shot 8 FGA in Game 1 for 9 points. The Cavs not only need to give him the ball more often, but Love himself needs to be more aggressive trying to get his points.

The Wine and Gold have a 67% probability to win this game, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (50-32) face off against the Indiana Pacers (48-34) @ Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. (3:30 PM ET)

NBA on ABC will cover today's game.

Both the 5 seeded Pacers and 4 seeded Cavs finished the 2017-18 NBA regular season 7-3 in their last 10 games.

The season series went in the Pacers favour at 3-1 this season, winning by an average of 4.0 points per contest (108.8-104.8).

Injury Report

Cavaliers : Kyle Korver (Foot) is QUESTIONABLE. None to Report

Pacers : None to Report

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : George Hill, Rodney Hood, LeBron James, Jeff Green, Kevin Love

Pacers : Darren Collison, Victor Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thaddeus Young, Myles Turner

Key to the Game : Defending Victor Oladipo. In the playoffs, teams will go to their stars more and more often. Oladipo broke out this past year and is the front runner for Most Improved Player.

The Wine and Gold have a 74% probability to win this game, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Micheal Jordan - 5987
LeBron James - 5847

If the Eastern Conference Finals goes...
4 games he needs to average 35.25

5 games he needs to average 28.20

6 games he needs to average 23.50

7 games he needs to average 20.14

If he keeps up his 34.4 9.0 7.1 2.1 1.5 averages from this post season and we went to 7 in the next two rounds he would rank...

1st in points at 6328 (341 over second)

7th in rebounds at 1956 (106 from 6th, 2148 from 1st)

3rd in assist at 1504 (334 from second)

1st in steals at 400 (5 over second)

19th in blocks at 219 (32 from 10th, 349 from 1st)

If following this postseason (and 14 games are played) LeBron keeps up his career playoff averages of 28.2 8.8 6.8 1.8 1.0 he would need....

0 games to be 1st in points

244 games to be 1st in rebounds (35 7 game series)

49 games to be 1st in assists (7 7 game series)

0 games to be 1st in steals

349 games to be 1st in blocks (50 7 game series)

Saw this stat on Twitter. Shoutout, Pat Kravitz.

Confirmed it on Hoops Stats.

03-04: 20

04-05: 28

05-06: 20

06-07: 27

07-08: 25

08-09: 28

09-10: 20

10-11: 30

11-12: 28

12-13: 24

13-14: 23

14-15: 30

15-16: 29

16-17: 28

17-18: 4

Last year, the Cavs struggled in the Finals because of their poor bench production from the likes of Deron Williams, RJ, and Shumpert. The starters actually kept up with Golden State's own starting unit, for the most part. This year (so far), Wade has found his role as the leader of the bench squad with Jeff Green, Kyle Korver, Channing Frye, and Cedi Osman thriving in their roles. I don't know how Rose will be able to fit in when he comes back and it's unclear what role Calderon will play when IT gets back. Frye will also lose minutes to TT now, depending on the match up. But it's interesting to finally see a LeBron team be able to hold and even grow leads while he's on the bench and he'll have an even more reduced burden when IT returns. This is shaping up to be one of the most complete team he's been a part of so far, let's see if they can keep it up the rest of the season and through the playoffs.

I was going to post this on the "Cavs adjustment might just include lineup changes" thread but it got too long to be a comment.

Seriously though, people need to watch game tape. Turn the sound off and just watch, you'll see it was not as bad as people think it was. We all have to chill with the hot takes.

1. Love at center, works. I saw Zach Lowe insinuating that Love at center was a big part of our problem defensively. It actually wasn't. Love was GREAT defensively in Game 1. People pointed out the couple of times guards got by him but not the numerous times he covered them pretty well.

2. The defensive scheme that Lue implemented actually worked. Oladipo did not get many drives to the basket. He was taking (and making) running pull up 3s and jumpers. That's a difficult shot to make (KD is the only guy who makes that consistently). There's not much you can do to defend that shot, since the defender has to back up to prevent the drive https://streamable.com/66es7. Cavs will probably adjust to that in game 2 and it WILL lead to a lot of drives for Oladipo.

3. If there is one criticism though, I would say we could have achieved our goal of preventing Oladipo from getting to the basket without hedging, blitzing, doubling or whatever fancy name you wanna call it. I have been so scarred by that 2014 Finals, that seeing two on the ball just aches me. When teams put two on the ball (whether by hedging, blitzing, doubling or trapping), all you gotta do is make two simple passes (they don't even have to be cross court) and you get an open shot. It is not very effective in today's basketball. It only works against teams that don't move the ball (teams with a star player who plays hero ball) and don't take threes. That defensive scheme is just not gonna work against the best teams in the league today (GSW, Houston, Toronto, Sixers etc). It worked this game and got us steals but sometimes it did not and led to open threes.

4. The defense we played on everybody not named Oladipo was actually GREAT. For the most part we did not double. We triple switched and it work out fine https://streamable.com/v66pu. It's the exact defense that Lue pulled out in that Philly near comeback. I was encouraged by the defense and I think it's the defense we are going to use if (or when) we get out of this series. I don't think we'll be doubling anyone else for long stretches.

5. Offense was the problem in this one. Dudes had alligator arms to start the game. Hill airballed two floaters. Green couldn't buy a bucket. Dudes were hesitating to shoot. Lebron chose the wrong approach to start the game, facilitating instead of attacking. We went down big early and the margin for error became very little. So much so that all the good things we got out of our defense were overshadowed by the little mistakes.

There is something you might notice a lot in the playoffs and probably should not overreact to. With all the switching required by this new defensive scheme, bigger bodies will sometimes find themselves outside the paint on rebounds. To combat this, LeBron has rebounding duties when the ball goes up. So, if he is guarding a guy on the perimeter, said guy would be wide open if they get an offensive rebound https://streamable.com/ewvvv. I noticed it in the game against Phily when we first debuted the defense. I thought they'd fix it come playoffs, guess not. Coach should probably instruct someone to go to LeBron's man when LeBron goes for the rebound. That's probably not gonna happen and LeBron will be blamed for that open shot all playoffs long.

So much more I could go into but this is getting too long.

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (47-30) face off against the Toronto Raptors (55-21) @ Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. (7PM Eastern)

Fox Sports Ohio will cover tonight's game.

The 1st seeded Raptors are 6-4 in their last 10 games while the 3 seeded Cavs are 8-2. Toronto has lost their last game, while Cleveland has won their last 3 heading into tonight's contest.

The season series is tied at 1-1 so far this season, after both teams were able to win on their home floor.

Injury Report

Cavaliers : George Hill (Ankle) is OUT. Kevin Love (Illness) and Kyle Korver (Foot) are QUESTIONABLE.

Raptors : None to Report

Due to illness, Cavs Head Coach Tyronn Lue will not be available for tonight's game, so Assistant Coach Larry Drew will lead the squad. However he will be on the sidelines.

Probable Starters

Cavaliers : Jose Calderon, Rodney Hood, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Larry Nance Jr

Raptors : Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, OG Anunoby, Serge Ibaka, Jonas Valanciunas

Key to the Game : Defending Kyle Lowry. Since the All-Star Break, he has been averaging 16.4 PPG on 45.3% 3PT. Neither one of Hood or Calderon are great defenders, so it'll be tough for the Cavs to try to contain him.

The Wine and Gold have an 48% probability to win this game, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!

Your Cleveland Cavaliers (46-30) face off against the Dallas Mavericks (23-53) @ Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. (6PM Eastern)

Fox Sports Ohio will cover tonight's game.

The 13th seeded Mavs are 2-8 in their last 10 games while the 3 seeded Cavs are 8-2. Dallas has lost 2 in a row, while Cleveland has won their last 2 heading into tonight.

The Cavs have the advantage against the Mavs at 1-0 so far this season, after stealing a game on the road, winning 111-104.

Injury Report

Cavs : George Hill (Ankle), and Kyle Korver (Foot) are OUT.

Mavs : Dirk Nowitzki (Ankle), Dwight Powell (Knee), and Salah Mejri (Knee) are QUESTIONABLE. JJ Barea (Personal), Wesley Matthews (Leg), and Seth Curry (Leg) are OUT.

Due to illness, Cavs Head Coach Tyronn Lue will not be available for tonight's game, so Assistant Coach Larry Drew will lead the squad. However he will be on the sidelines.

Probable Starters

Cavs : Jose Calderon, Rodney Hood, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Larry Nance Jr

Mavs : Dennis Smith Jr, Dorian Finney-Smith, Harrison Barnes, Dwight Powell, Dirk Nowitzki

Key to the Game : Defending Dennis Smith Jr. The rookie guard is one of the most athletic players in the game. It'll be up to Jose Calderon and Rodney Hood to guard him, neither of which are very strong defenders.

The Wine and Gold have an 82% probability to win this game, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Go Cavs!