Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen led the way with a 46 combined points.
You can’t earn a trophy in January, but you can earn respect. The Cleveland Cavaliers might’ve done that as they disposed of the Oklahoma City Thunder with an impressive 129-122 victory.
The Cavs relentlessly attacked the Thunder’s defense where they were weakest. Oklahoma City gives up the most corner three-point attempts in the league. Cleveland immediately came out and hit corner threes on their first two possessions, before going inside and pressing their advantage there.
The Thunder only have one traditional center in Isaiah Hartenstein whom they’ve felt comfortable playing with Chet Holmgren sidelined. The Cavs used that to their benefit as Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley continually attacked the paint. They went at Hartenstein and whoever they drew a mismatch against.
The Thunder forced the ball out of Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell’s hands as much as possible daring Allen and Mobley to beat them in the short roll. But unlike in the past, the bigs did a great job of playmaking out of there and keeping the offense flowing.
Mitchell struggled to get anything going. He was forcing shots early on and never truly found a rhythm as he provided just 11 points on 3-16 shooting.
You don’t want to make too much of one regular season game in January, but this showed how much the Cavs have grown in the past two seasons. The New York Knicks in the 2023 playoffs also forced the ball out of Mitchell’s hands, made the bigs beat them in the short roll, and dared the Cavs to make corner threes. This Oklahoma City team did the same, but the Cavs answered the bell. They beat them because they were comfortable doing all of those things.
The Cavs’ offense didn’t suffer even though Mitchell did. They found ways to keep supplementing their offense by finding the shooter in the corner whenever the defense did rotate. Cleveland nailed 8-14 (57.1%) corner threes from the corner. This led to a 129 offensive rating (91st percentile) for the game.
Cleveland won this game in the final few minutes when they broke OKC’s back by getting three straight offensive rebounds in a demoralizing way in a one-possession game. What could’ve been a two-point game with 1:30 left ended up in a five-point Cavs advantage with under a minute to play.
It was like the opposite of the Knicks series.
Garland put the final nail in the coffin in the 129-122 win with a teardrop in the lane to ice it away.
Allen led the way for Cleveland with 25 points on 9-11 shooting with 6 assists and 12 boards. Mobley contributed 21 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists.
Cleveland also benefited from strong contributions from their role players. Dean Wade (11 points), Max Strus (17 points), and Ty Jerome (15 points) all had timely baskets in the win.
This was a test of whether the Cavs’ brand of basketball was enough to work against the best teams in the league. Once again, it did. Cleveland is now 3-1 against the Boston Celtics, New York, and Oklahoma City. That one loss was by three points and without four rotation players.
It’s difficult to ask for more from a team at this point in the season.
The Cavaliers have continually shown that they aren’t just good, but a title contender that’s winning at a historic pace. That was proven once again as they beat the top team in the Western Conference.