Cavaliers vs. Bucks Final Score: Monta Ellis Goes Supernova

That was a much better loss than the previous losses. That's a weird sentence to type, but it's true. After getting blown out a bunch of times, Byron Scott was getting fed up with the lack of effort from the players. On Wednesday, the Cavaliers certainly showed some fire and fought against the Bucks. They lost for the ninth straight time, but at least they weren't embarrassed. Powered by Monta Ellis, Milwaukee beat the Cavs 107-98 and sent Cleveland to their 9th straight loss.

Cavs "Leaders": Points: Parker, 27; Rebounds: Thompson, 9; Assists: Sloan, 8

Quick Thoughts:

Without Kyrie Irving, we had reason to believe that the Cavaliers would struggle scoring. Hey, we were right. For the first half anyway. Cleveland scored just 39 points in the first two quarters, but bounced back in the second half to reach 98. Much of that was garbage time, but some of it was due to the fact that Anthony Parker scored 27 points. TWENTY SEVEN POINTS?? IN THE NBA? IN 2012?? Yeah. 27 points on 11-14 shooting. Holy crap.

The Cavaliers are winless in April so far. Will the Indians become the first Cleveland team to get a win in April? The Tribe have Opening Day tonight and I strongly encourage you to join us over at Let's Go Tribe, SBNation's Cleveland Indians blog. It's got fantastic content and a great community. Truthfully, it's the type of intelligent, passionate community that I hope to build here at FearTheSword.

I'm not sure if you are all Indians fans, but regardless, I'm excited for Opening Day. Here's your inspirational video to get you pumped for baseball. If you aren't an Indians fan, just pretend the "What if?" question is talking about if the Cavaliers win the lottery and get Anthony Davis. Can you imagine? What if?

So I mentioned that the Cavaliers showed some better effort and hung around with the Bucks last night. Something that I didn't realize until just now was that the Cavaliers actually won the final three quarters. That's right, they outscored Milwaukee in each of the last three quarters of the game. Unfortunately, the Cavs dug themselves a huge hole in the first quarter by being outscored 29-14.

After the Cavs hung around and cut the league to single digits, the Bucks' newest toy, Monta Ellis, decided it was time to go home. Ellis is a prolific scorer and his full arsenal was on display last night. He scored 16 straight points for the Bucks in the fourth quarter and made some ridiculous shots to put the game away.

Tristan Thompson played pretty well, although the stats are a little better than what I actually saw. He still gets stripped far too easily in the paint. He simply needs to get stronger with the ball. Regardless, Tigger had 12 points and 9 rebounds on over 50% shooting. He has made significant improvement from the beginning of the season.

At this point, we should be watching the D-League guys and seeing if they have the ability to stick around in the NBA. Lester Hudson struggled mightily. He shot 3-13 from the floor but did contribute elsewhere, grabbing 5 rebounds and dished out 6 assists while only committing one turnover. Donald Sloan also facilitated well in place of Kyrie Irving. Sloan had 8 assists and just two turnovers. It would be huge if the Cavs could pencil Sloan in as Kyrie's backup and not use a draft pick to get another PG.

Fear The Sword's Player of the Game:

Anthony Parker

I can't explain it. It's ridiculous. He just made everything. He looked particularly spry out there and was shooting the lights out. He finished with 27 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals. If you started Anthony Parker in your fantasy league, you're insane...but good job.