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Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we continue to put ourselves through this misery? The Cavaliers looked like they were on their way to losing their 7th straight game, but miraculously forced overtime and stole a win from the Magic at home, 87-81.
The Orlando Magic led 79-72 with THIRTEEN SECONDS LEFT. The Magic are so incredibly dedicated to the tank, that they managed to blow a 7-point lead in 13 seconds. They fouled Jarrett Jack while he was taking a three, missed some key free throws, and Dion Waiters hit some big layups -- including one with 0.6 seconds left to send the game to overtime. Yes, that's right. The game went to overtime tied at 79. 79 points in 48 minutes.
Nobody on the Cavs played particularly well, although Anderson Varejao did hit some key shots and had a ton of rebounds. In fact, he grabbed 25 rebounds to tie a Cavaliers franchise record. He has now played in all 32 games this season, more than he played in last year when his season was cut short by a leg injury and then a life-threatening blood clot. To think that a year ago, there was a chance he would never play basketball again and now he's out here being as active as ever. He's just the best.
Matthew Dellavedova was tremendously energetic as usual. He is such an incredible pest on defense, that he manages to make up for his lack of length of athleticism. Delly took a key charge and probably had every Magic player wanting to punch him in the face by the time this thing was over. I really don't enjoy watching this Cavaliers team, but Delly is pretty fun. As a whole, this game was truly awful to watch and I'm really impressed by your lack of other entertainment options if you watched the whole thing.
Dion Waiters hit the game-tying layup at the buzzer in regulation, but really didn't have a good game. He shot 6 of 20 from the field and took some extremely ill-advised pull-up jumpers. Tristan Thompson had a double-double and Jack had 14 points and 7 assists -- but they weren't very good either. This game was a giant slopfest and it very much looked like two teams that were a combined 20-42 coming into the night.
Mike Brown will preach about how they won this game with their defense and it's true, they did. But they also got supremely lucky. They are not a good team right now and they only won tonight because they had some plays go their way against another really bad team. If they play like this on most nights, the Cavs lose.
The Cavs' offense was truly terrible in this game, but that's not very surprising. They haven't been good on offense all year and now they were forced to play without Kyrie Irving who missed the game with a left knee bruise. Take a bad offensive team and subtract their best offensive player and you get...whatever that thing was. There were plenty of air balls and horrible turnovers. Neither team knew how to play actual basketball and it looked more like a pickup game at the local YMCA than two professional franchises. This team is actually making me forget what real basketball looks like. When I turn to an Oklahoma City Thunder game or a Los Angeles Clippers game, it looks like a different sport.
This was me by the time I realized that it was going to overtime:
The first two picks of the 2013 NBA Draft played against each again tonight. Victor Oladipo was pretty awful. He looked out of control on offense and seemed to consistently disrupt what the Magic were trying to do in the half court. He hit a few jumpers, but they weren't particularly good shots. His on-ball defense was fairly impressive, however. He kept his man in front of him most of the night and made a few nice plays with his length. Anthony Bennett was, well....you know:
— Justin Rowan (@Cavsanada) January 3, 2014
ROLL CALL
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