Steve Dykes – USA TODAY Sports
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to build off of the momentum of Wednesday night’s victory over the Portland Trail Blazers, especially off of their success in the fourth quarter.
The Cavaliers gave up a 19-point lead against the Trail Blazers, and it looked like for a time like it was going to be the same old story of the team playing well for much of the night and then falling apart at the end. Too often this season, the Cavaliers have battled for much of the game, only to lose their aggressiveness on the offensive end while also giving up too many easy baskets in the closing minutes.
Against the Trail Blazers, though, the Cavaliers kept driving to the rim late in the fourth quarter, and got stops when they needed them so that they could pull out the victory.
Guard Kyrie Irving was clutch for the Cavaliers once again, and hit several tough shots in the fourth quarter, including one amazing spinning lay-up. He scored 33 points against the Trail Blazers and put in 8 of the Cavaliers final 10 points of the night.
“The last thing we had written on the board was composure, and I thought we had that in the latter part of the game,” Head Coach Byron Scott said. “We kept our composure, tried to run our plays and tried to get the type of shot we wanted. We knew at the end we had to defend, and we were able to do that the last couple minutes of the game.”
Composure is a key element for the Cavaliers, and they have not shown nearly enough of it in the fourth quarters in a lot of their contests so far this season. The team is very young and is learning, and if they can now learn how to keep their composure late in games for the rest of the season, the win at Portland could be a big turning point for the Cavaliers.
