The Cleveland Cavaliers have won 49 games in the league so far this season, and none of them has said more about how serious we should take this team that achieved against the Celtics on Friday.
Boston led this 25-3 game before the first four minutes had marked. Even in a league where the big, even huge, the returns are relatively normal, that type of immediate ambush should have buried the cavs. On the other hand, thanks to 61 combined points of Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland and a triquite in the quarter of Evan Mobley, Cleveland recovered for a 123-116 victory, his consecutive ninth, which should block the seed number 1 at the Eastern Conference.
With 23 games to play, Cleveland now has an eight -game advantage over Boston currently in hand, which makes the leadership a nine effective games. Boston is not mathematically out of the race for number 1, but it is not happening. Cleveland is going to be the best east seed, and this is the type of victory that could be psychologically huge if these teams meet in the conference finals.
After all, even when Cleveland has run during this regular season, Boston is still the favorite to win everything in +200, closely followed by Thunder in +210. The cavs are third parties with +650, which means that the masses are not bets, literally and figuratively, in them as a frontline contender.
Perhaps the Celtics either take the cavs so seriously. After Jays Tatum buried a corner 3 to stretch Boston’s advantage to the aforementioned 25-3, he had a small message for the CAVs.
I am not an expert lip reader, but it is “to take out the * bleep * from here” quite clear from Tatum, and one would be safe to deduce that his message was deeper than this particular game. I was telling the cavs that the fun is over, that they have had their small regular seasonal race, but now that serious things are starting, they do not belong, not in the Boston sand, not in the Boston class, and certainly not in the conversation of first level title.
Tatum had a tremendous game, becoming the First player in the era of play by NBA game To record 30 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in the first half. He ended with 46 points, 16 rebounds and nine assists, but his celebration was clearly premature.
Cleveland surpassed Boston by 29 points from that front moment.
Of course, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis did not play. The absence of Holiday left Sam Hauser to be repeatedly attacked by Cleveland scorers. But Tatum, Derrick White and Jaylen Brown scored 99 combined points. A 22 -point advantage with its two best players that go for 46 (Tatum) and 37 (Brown), at home, while shooting 43% of 3 as a team, is a 99% winning formula of the time.
Cleveland simply did not die, and that, more than anything else to get out of this game, is the food to take. The cavs do not care what Vegas or Tatum thinks or any other person. They know they are really, and if the Celtics did not do it before Friday night, they do it now.
