The Cleveland Cavaliers made this one more stressful than it should have been. They led the Charlotte Hornets 56-32 at halftime, before Charlotte cut the lead to 4 points in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Cleveland eventually closed the door and secured their 25th win of the season. But, as I said, it felt less satisfying than you\u2019d have liked.<\/p>\n
The Hornets have been better than their record recently. They entered the night with the league\u2019s second-best<\/a> offense over the last two weeks, while Cleveland had the 24th-best defense<\/a> during this same stretch. That felt like a combination that could have burned the Cavs tonight. But they began the game with the appropriate energy on defense, holding the Hornets to just 12 points in the second quarter.<\/p>\n That focus wouldnt\u2019 last all 48 minutes. The Cavs slipped in the second half and allowed the Hornets to go on a big run. But they found their footing and got enough stops in the end to stave off a disastrous collapse.<\/p>\n Evan Mobley started the game hot. He had 13 points and 11 rebounds at halftime after a handful of jaw-dropping dunks. As is the theme, this aggression didn\u2019t carry over to the final two quarters. Mobley finished with just 14 points in an otherwise solid performance.<\/p>\n Charlotte was led by Brandon Miller with 24 points. Lamelo Ball had a rough night, shooting 0-10 from deep and 1-15 from the floor overall.<\/p>\n Donovan Mitchell had 24 points on 8-20 shooting. It wasn\u2019t a great night for Mitchell, as his 8 turnovers added fuel to Charlotte\u2019s fire. It\u2019s clear the Cavs are still missing Darius Garland\u2019s efficient command of the offense.<\/p>\n The Cavs are back at home this weekend with a game versus the Sacramento Kings before going on the road for a matchup against the Orlando Magic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Cavaliers made this one more stressful than it should have been. They led the Charlotte Hornets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553891,"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-553890","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\/115940634339299760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553890","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=553890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}