The Los Angeles Clippers(17-6) are a championship-caliber team and have hopes of winning an NBA title this season, and at this point, the Cleveland Cavaliers(10-12) are a team that is looking to grow. The difference in where these teams are in terms of development was on full display on Wednesday night.
L.A.’s two stars came up big. Paul George was 13/20 from the field, including 8/9 from three-point land, and finished with 35 points, and Kawhi Leonard added 24 as the Clippers defeated the Cavs 121-99 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Cleveland trailed 52-49 at the half, but George went off in the third quarter. He scored 15 points, including four threes, and before you knew it, Cleveland trailed by 14 at the end of third quarter. While Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff felt his team could have played better defensively, he had to give George credit.
“I think we did give up too many uncontested threes in the second half and give Paul George a lot of credit; he made a lot of contested threes in that half as well.”
The Clippers lost to the Nets on Tuesday night, so Bickerstaff knew that Cleveland was going to get the Clippers’ best effort.
“Very good team(Clippers), there’s no doubt about that,” Bickerstaff said. “Coming off a loss, they were going to come out and give us their best shot, and we didn’t defend the three-point line well enough to give ourselves a shot. On the offensive end, we didn’t generate enough threes to give ourselves an opportunity either.”
Cleveland now has a tough stretch coming up. They have a two-game set at home against the Bucks, and then they head out West for a five-game road trip, which includes games against the Suns, Clippers, and Nuggets. According to Collin Sexton, who led Cleveland with 27 points against the Clippers, the Cavaliers have what it takes to succeed.
“We got a tough stretch of games coming up. We just gotta make sure we win them. We gotta make sure we go (get) these next two and just try to get both them. We got a nice little set of games on the west coast. We just gotta make sure we get each and every game that we can… We definitely have a good stretch of games, but I feel like they are very capable games that we can win.”
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