Game #31 Recap: Cavaliers 84, Hornets 89

Well that was uninspiring. The Cavaliers came out incredibly flat and quickly fell behind the Hornets in a game that, on paper, they should have won. They never got their offense going and lost to the Hornets 89-84 and fell to 13-18 going into all star weekend.

Cavs Leaders: Points: Jamison, 22; Rebounds: Jamison, 12; Assists: Irving, 11

Quick Thoughts:

What the hell, guys? This was supposed to be an easy win against a bad team on the 3rd night of a back to back to back. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. The Cavs had no energy and could not score at all. It was relatively boring to watch and it made me sad.

Oh, before I go on, I should let you know that I broke my thumb playing basketball last night and it's really hard to type. This is going to be a relatively short recap.

The Cavs starting backcourt was downright terrible. Daniel Gibson started alongside Kyrie Irving and the two combined to shoot 3 of 22 (!!!) from the field. That's really not good. Irving tied his career low that he set on opening night, scoring just 6 points. It was encouraging, however, to see Irving register 11 assists. It was his first time cracking double-digits in the assists column and it broke his previous career high of 8, which he set the night before.

The ball just wouldn't go in the hoop. It was really frustrating. The Cavaliers shot 31.8% from the field and you're just not going to win many games when you do that. Similarly, Cleveland shot just 64.9% from the free throw line. Awful.

Ryan Hollins played 29 minutes. That's all I have to say about that.

One impressive or encouraging stat was that the Cavaliers were able to grab 22 offensive rebounds. Crashing the offensive boards allowed the Cavs to get a bunch of second chance opportunities. However, the Cavs were so pathetic shooting the ball that it didn't matter all that much. Jamison and Tristan Thompson each snagged 6 o-boards.

Fear The Sword's Player Of The Game:

Tristan Thompson

This is not a ringing endorsement by any means. Thompson shot just 2 of 8 from the charity stripe and thus forced Byron Scott to sit him down the stretch. When he did play (in just 16 minutes), Thompson was really effective. He was a beast on the glass, getting 10 boards in such limiting playing time. He recorded another double-double with 10 points to go along with his rebounds, and could have had a lot more if he could hit his free throws. He had a couple dunks that helped keep me awake during this otherwise boring game and for that, he gets player of the game.