CLEVELAND, OH--- A tough night in Cleveland as the Cavs struggled in a 109-91 loss to the visiting New York Knicks. Offensively, you could see the effect of not having Darius Garland, Caris LeVert, Jarrett Allen and Ty Jerome. Young players like Georges Niang, Emoni Bates, and Craig Porter Jr would get some playing time. The player Cavs fans were most excited to see out of those 3 was Emoni Bates, he would finish with 9 points while pulling in 6 rebounds.
The Cavs kept things very competitive in the first half, lead by Donovan Mitchell who would have a 20 point first half, 14 of those 20 first half points would come in the 2nd quarter. Mitchell would finish with 26 points, 3 rebounds, and 3 assists. Another bright spot for the Cavs was Isaac Okoro continuing to put forth excellent effort, Okoro scored in double digits for the 4th straight game Tuesday night finishing with 11 points and 7 rebounds. As the 2nd half would start, the Knicks would start to show that they were going to run away with the game. The Cavs looked like a completely different time in the 2nd half, as the 1st half ended at 58-52, but things started to quickly get out of hand in the 3rd quarter.
The Cavs struggled greatly from the field in the 2nd half, starting the 3rd quarter 0 for 11 from the field. Things would not improve as they would only make 7 of their 24 shots from the field, and only 1 of 9 attempts from beyond the arc. The Cavs would finish with only 10 3 balls on the night out of 38 attempts. The Knicks were led by both Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson with 19 points, followed closely by Immanuel Quickly with 18 and RJ Barrett with 16 points. One of the things the Knicks did better then the Cavs was second chance points, the Knicks got 20 second chance points, compared to the Cavs 7 second chance points.
The Cavs don't have much time to dwell on this loss, as they will travel to New York to play these same Knicks Wednesday night, same tip off time of 7:30 pm and you can listen to he game on the same station, your flagship Newsradio WTAM 1100 AM, 106.9 FM and online HERE