{"id":644720,"date":"2026-03-07T05:36:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/644720\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T05:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:36:24","slug":"charge-continue-to-climb-standings-with-another-one-sided-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/644720\/","title":{"rendered":"Charge continue to climb standings with another one-sided victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 The Cleveland Charge continued their impressive season on Friday as they cruised to an easy 125-99 win over the shorthanded Windy City Bulls thanks to standout performances from Riley Minix and Tristan Enaruna. The victory pulls the Charge within a half game of the top spot in the conference.<\/p>\n

G League success is defined in two ways. Are you winning? And are your players being called up? The Charge have checked both boxes, which is incredibly difficult to do because that means you need to be continually replacing the players who were just called up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means that we have an incredible group, an incredible organization, and a staff that just continues to pour into these guys,\u201d Charge head coach Eli Kell-Abrams said. \u201cI just could not be prouder of the group we have. It\u2019s really hard to lose the guys you lose and maintain your culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the culture pieces they lost was Norchad Omier, who recently signed a two-way deal with the Los Angeles Clippers. This left a hole inside, which is why they targeted Olivier Sarr to fill that role. The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> signed him to a two-way deal<\/a>, and he made his debut with the Charge on Friday.<\/p>\n

Kell-Abrams said he was proud of the way Sarr fought through adversity in his first game with the team. Sarr picked up two fouls in the first minute of the second half, which forced him to sit out the rest of the third quarter. He made up for lost time by pouring in 14 of his 18 points in the final quarter to help the Charge extend their 10-point lead at the beginning of the quarter into the 26-point blowout it became.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe offers a level of rim protection that\u2019s unprecedented in the G, and it\u2019s something we\u2019re going to rely on,\u201d Kell-Abrams said after Sarr picked up a block and two steals to go along with his all-around good debut, albeit in just 21 minutes of play.<\/p>\n

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Anything bought from the links helps support Fear the Sword. You can buy the Let \u2018Em Know shirt HERE<\/a>. You can also shop all of Homage\u2019s Cavs gear HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Minix is another player the Charge added midway through the season, who has allowed them to keep momentum going. The Cavs signed him to a two-way deal in the middle of February<\/a>. He once again made an impact with his outside shot, going 4-8 from three in his 22-point performance.<\/p>\n

Despite how well the on-court results have been for Minix since coming to Cleveland \u2014 he came into this game averaging 19.9 points and 7.1 rebounds on .549\/.461\/.774 shooting splits \u2014 how he\u2019s fit into the overall team structure is what has impressed his head coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith his skill level, he could have come in and just been about his shots, been about his minutes, been about whatever he needed to do to get to the next level,\u201d Kell-Abrams said. \u201cBut he bought into the group, and he won the guys instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s win was also carried by two guys who\u2019ve been here all season: Enaruna and Darius Brown II.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to talk yourself into Enaruna making an impact at the next level sooner rather than later. He\u2019s a 6\u20197\u201d wing who can attack off-the-dribble, has good lateral quickness, and most importantly has a great feel for the game.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always room on an NBA court for people who have that skill. Especially one who has improved his outside shot as much as Enaruna has.<\/p>\n

Confidence in the outside shot has been an issue with Enaruna, but that\u2019s turning around. He shot 28.6% from three during the first 14 games of the Tip-Off Tournament, but is connecting on 47.9% of his threes since the regular season began around the start of the new year.<\/p>\n

Enaruna attributes the improvement to having more confidence in his shot.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasketball is very statistics-based,\u201d Enaruna said.<\/p>\n

That got into his head to the point that he would worry about misses so much that it affected how he reacted when he got the ball open on the perimeter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could feel my body tense up because I wanted to make it so bad,\u201d Enaruna said. The solution was coming to a better understanding that you aren\u2019t defined by one shot and trusting the work that you put in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve shot thousands of threes,\u201d Enaruna said. \u201cI know how to make them. You just got to trust your body to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That worked on Friday, as Enaruna went 3-7 from deep en route to a 25-point, 11-rebound, and two-assist night.<\/p>\n

Brown once again contributed 15 or more assists for the fifth time this season as he collected 18 in the victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe drives it all,\u201d Kell-Abram said of Brown. \u201cWhen you have guys that are not about themselves, that are pass first in a league that is not a pass-first league, that makes us different than everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Charge team has indeed been different all season. They\u2019re within striking distance of the first spot in the conference and have a deep enough team to make a run in the postseason. And that\u2019s because this group has been built on the right things and has completely bought into each other\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts with the foundation,\u201d Enaruna said. \u201cThe coaching staff putting a plan together before the season about how we\u2019re going to do things right, no matter who we got on our squad. Whether guys are going up and down, we have this system that works, and everybody just buys in. It works for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 The Cleveland Charge continued their impressive season on Friday as they cruised to an easy 125-99…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,32186,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-644720","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-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-cleveland-charge","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116186277614945807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644720","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=644720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}