Mistake By The Lake

The C's were hit with a tough overtime loss last night in Cleveland, losing 109-104 and running their record to a still-awfully-impressive 11-2. Not a huge amount to say about this one; LeBron went for 38 with 13 assists, and Drew Gooden put up an uncharacteristically productive 24 and 13. Zydrunas Ilgauskas also finished with 14 boards, which is never a good sign. Basically the Cavs played quite well and the C's didn't play that well, or at least not as well as we've come to expect from them. They were outrebounded 47-40 and out-shot 48% to 43%, and you can probably figure things out from there. Ray Allen poured in 29 in a losing effort, though it took him 25 shots to do it and he bizarrely missed two huge, potentially game-winning free throws down the stretch. Still, we love Ray around here, so he gets a pass on this one. The fact that he played 50 minutes last night makes me start to twitch, I should add. KG was strangely pedestrian (19 pts, only 5 boards) and Paul Pierce had one of those PP games you'd kind of rather forget, shooting 5-15 and badly missing a wide-open shot off a perfect pass from Garnett at crunch time. Also, last night featured the return of Bad Rondo, as the young 'un shot 1-9 chucked up a couple bricks towards the end that were flat-out embarrassing. Something tells me he's in the gym as I write this, though.

Honestly, it was a tough loss, since we were so close to winning at points, but it's not gonna keep me up at night. We had a less-than-perfect game and were still very much in it against last year's Eastern Conference Champ (it makes me sick to even write that), who were on their home court and almost certainly played better than us wire-to-wire. If the C's had won last night we'd have been talking about how they stole one, and let's face it, they stole that miracle in Charlotte and how many of those can we expect in a five-day period. They've got a few days off before Miami on Friday (in South Beach), and the Heat gave them a hell of a game the last time out. You could make the case that the C's are still head boy in the East right now (although that sound you hear is the Orlando Magic loudly clearing its collective throat), but this loss should certainly quiet all the foolish talk about them being the cream of the league, not when San Antonio's gotten off to the best start in franchise history.