{"id":550635,"date":"2026-01-21T08:22:46","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T08:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/550635\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T08:22:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T08:22:46","slug":"thunder-outclass-cavs-136-104-fear-the-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/550635\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder outclass Cavs 136-104 | Fear The Sword"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 It\u2019s been wrong to use injuries as an excuse for many of the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>\u2019 losses this season. They\u2019ve had enough talent in many of those defeats to prevail still. Monday afternoon was different. They didn\u2019t have the right combination of skill players to compete with the Oklahoma City Thunder and were thoroughly outclassed as a result, leading to a 32-point loss.<\/p>\n

The Cavs were without Darius Garland (toe)<\/a>, Sam Merrill (hand), and Max Strus (foot). That\u2019s the wrong combination of guys to be missing against a physical, Oklahoma City defense that can wreak havoc on teams that don\u2019t have numerous on-ball creators.<\/p>\n

Donovan Mitchell has traditionally struggled in the matchup against the Thunder. Lu Dort was seemingly built in a lab to make life difficult for Mitchell. He\u2019s one of the few guard defenders who can match Mitchell\u2019s combination of speed and athleticism. In two games last season, Mitchell combined to score just 19 points on 6-31 shooting.<\/p>\n

That trend continued. Mitchell scored the opening basket of the game, but then went cold. He wasn\u2019t able to get past Dort and couldn\u2019t shoot well enough behind the arc to make up for it. Mitchell ended the night with 19 points on 5-18 shooting to go along with three assists.<\/p>\n

The Cavs\u2019 offense struggled as a result. They went 4-18 (22.2%) from beyond the arc in the first half. That isn\u2019t going to do it against a Thunder team that does such a good job at protecting the paint. This led to a 15-point deficit for Cleveland at the break.<\/p>\n

The Cavs showed some fight in the third quarter. The Thunder pushed the lead to 20 early in the frame, but the Cavs were able to make it nominally competitive by cutting the deficit to nine late in the quarter. But that was as close as they would get in the second half.<\/p>\n

Any comeback was reliant on the three-ball falling. That never happened as the Cavs ended the game shooting 8-25 (22.9%) from three.<\/p>\n

The Thunder made this a one-sided affair in the fourth quarter. They won that quarter 45-25 to make this game much more lopsided than it felt for the first three quarters.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City\u2019s defense made Cleveland\u2019s bigs beat them with how they were able to defend Mitchell. The Cavs\u2019 bigs weren\u2019t able to consistently do so. Mobley\u2019s boxscore looks fine. He finished with 16 points, seven rebounds, and five assists, but he didn\u2019t have the superstar impact the Cavs needed him to have if they were going to win this one.<\/p>\n

Jarrett Allen added 16 points and nine rebounds.<\/p>\n

The Thunder were led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren. SGA had a game-high 30 points on 12-20 shooting to go along with three assists. Holmgren supplied 28 points and eight rebounds.<\/p>\n

Even though the Thunder were missing two starters in Jalen Williams (hamstring) and Isaiah Hartenstein (right soleus), they were able to maintain their identity. Cleveland wasn\u2019t. The Cavs didn\u2019t have the shooting or playmaking to play how they wanted to. And right now, that\u2019s what separates Cleveland from the truly elite teams.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers will be back in action on Wednesday as they hit the road to take on a Charlotte Hornets team that is playing better than expected over their last few games. Tip-off is at 7 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 It\u2019s been wrong to use injuries as an excuse for many of the Cleveland Cavaliers\u2019 losses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,52699,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-550635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-scores","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115932125325778209","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}