CLEVELAND – The Cavaliers are going to have to win 37 straight home games if they want to match last season’s 39-2 record at Quicken Loans Arena.
Cleveland never got it together Thursday night in losing 86-85 to the Chicago Bulls, leaving its home mark at 2-2.
The Cavaliers didn’t lose their second home game in 2008-09 until the final game of the regular season, when superstar LeBron James watched in street clothes in order to rest for the playoffs.
Down one, Cleveland had the ball with 4.3 seconds left, but James drove to his left into two defenders, no foul was called and the ball went out of bounds.
Officials ruled the Cavaliers small forward was the last to touch it and awarded the ball to Chicago, effectively ending the game.
James led the Cavaliers with 25 points, seven rebounds and six assists, while Shaquille O’Neal had 14 points and 10 rebounds and Anderson Varejao had 12 points and 13 boards.
Mo Williams had a horrendous night from the field, going 4-of-13, including several key misses down the stretch.
The Cleveland bench, meanwhile, should have simply been benched.
Delonte West (1-of-5) wasn’t very good, Zydrunas Ilgauskas (0-of-9) was absolutely awful and J.J. Hickson (0-of-4) was so bad in three first-half minutes the Cavaliers nearly had to call timeout to get him out of the game.
Cleveland also made just 12-of-20 at the line, yet it was in this game until the bitter end because the Bulls weren’t a whole lot better.
The Bulls went up 84-78 when Brad Miller scored with 2:36 to go, but when James hit a 3-pointer with 1:33 left, the Cavaliers were back within one.
Chicago’s John Salmons then beat Varejao and appeared to have an easy shot in the lane, but James came over from the weak side and swatted it off the backboard, only to have Williams miss a wide-open 3-pointer at the other end.
The Bulls rebounded and called time with 1:30 left, but Salmons missed an open three and West came out with the ball after a wild scramble, only to have Williams badly miss what was an unwise attempt to begin with.
Chicago threw the ball all over the court and, finally forced to shoot because the shot clock was about to expire, Luol Deng failed to draw iron on a running bank attempt with 4.3 ticks on the clock.
The officials went to replay to determine if Deng’s shot grazed the iron after hitting the board, but determined it did not.
Neither team was good enough to escape the other through three periods, but the Cavaliers managed to lead 65-63 heading into the final quarter thanks to a last-second 3-pointer by Daniel Gibson. At that point, Gibson was 3-of-3 from the field, but the rest of Cleveland’s reserves were a combined 0-of-10.
The Bulls scored just 17 points in the third, but that was offset by Cleveland’s 16-point second quarter on a night when poor shooting and even poorer execution by both teams made points hard to come by.
In different ways, James and the Cavaliers were both hurting by the end of the second period.
Midway through the quarter, James rolled his left ankle when he stepped on the end of the elevated floor along the baseline, but he quickly shook off that mishap.
With 1:32 to go in the half, James unsuccessfully tried to save a ball along the opposite baseline, forcing him to leap over a cameraman and dodge some fans. He landed partially in an aisle and partially on the edge of a chair and stayed down for several minutes.
It looked like James hurt his right elbow or upper arm and possibly suffered a cut on his left forearm, but he stayed in the game.
The Cavaliers weren’t quite so fortunate, as they fell apart late in the second quarter.
The Bulls, never an aesthetically pleasing team to watch, weren’t exceptional by any means, but they closed the period on an 8-0 run to take a 46-43 lead at halftime.
Cleveland, which went 7-of-24 from the field in the second quarter, didn’t score for the last 3:35.
The Cavaliers led 27-25 after one thanks to 11 points from James and seven points and seven boards from an extremely active Varejao.
Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net.
