CLEVELAND — Kyrie Irving came back and Semih Erden stepped up.

That unconventional dynamic duo propelled the Cavaliers to an impressive 98-87 victory over the slumping Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night at Quicken Loans Arena.

Indiana’s Dahntay Jones shoots over Cavaliers center Semih Erden, who scored a career-high 18 points. (AP PHOTO)

After missing three games with a concussion, the 19-year-old Irving made a triumphant return, putting up 22 points on 8-for-12 shooting, three rebounds and five assists in 37 minutes.

The 6-foot-3 rookie attacked the basket against 7-2 Pacers center Roy Hibbert for his first bucket in eight days and never looked back, scoring 12 points in the opening period and committing only one turnover on the evening.

“I’m 100 percent,” Irving said. “Just because I had a concussion doesn’t mean my game is going to change in any way. I had the same aggressiveness.”

Erden, who had no points and four fouls Saturday against Philadelphia in his first start in place of injured center Anderson Varejao, was immeasurably better the second time around, finishing with a career-high 18 points on 7-for-8 shooting and a season-high eight rebounds in 31 impressive minutes.

“Semih played with the energy we’ve been talking about,” Cavs coach Byron Scott said. “He was a lot more efficient at the offensive end and the defensive end.”

Truth be told, Erden didn’t do anything extraordinary at the offensive end, as almost all his buckets came on dunks or layups. Most came on pick-and-roll plays with Irving and Ramon Sessions, who was 5-for-5 from the field while finishing with 13 points, four rebounds and four assists.

“It definitely was a conscious effort to get him going,” Irving said of the 7-foot center, who earned the right to start again Friday when LeBron James and the Miami Heat come to town.

The Pacers (17-12), who were in the middle of a back-to-back-to-back set, dropped their fifth straight game and fell behind by 21 in the second period.

Dahntay Jones, who started in place of injured small forward Danny Granger (ankle), had three points and was 1-for-8 from the field in 37 abysmal minutes, while power forward David West finished 4-for-15.

Early on, Jones couldn’t even guard Cleveland’s Omri Casspi, who hit three 3-pointers in the first nine minutes of the game as Cleveland (11-16) went up 27-12.

Casspi, who finished with 10 points on 3-for-10 shooting and a season-high nine boards, did nothing after that, but a large portion of the damage had already been done.

Cleveland won with relative ease despite the fact Antawn Jamison was 6-for-18 from the field — he did have eight rebounds and four assists to go along with his 13 points — and Alonzo Gee was 2-for-11 off the bench.

“The effort was fantastic on both ends of the floor,” Scott said.

The only negative was a sprained left ankle suffered by starting shooting guard Daniel Gibson, who exited with 8:17 left in the third period when he landed on the foot of Indiana’s Paul George after missing a 3-pointer. Gibson is listed as day-to-day and X-rays were negative, but he will likely miss at least a few games.

The Cavs, who never trailed, did almost everything right in taking a 56-38 halftime lead. The best indicator of their dominance — and Indiana’s inability to do much of anything — was a 16-2 edge in assists.
“It was about as good as it gets,” Scott said.

Erden scored Cleveland’s first five points and the team never looked back. The Cavs took a 32-20 lead after one period behind 12 points from Irving and nine points, five rebounds and two assists from Casspi.

Things went even better in the second period, when the Cavs led by as many as 21 against a Pacers team that couldn’t do much of anything right and didn’t exactly play with a sense of urgency.

Indiana shot just .304 from the field over the first two periods, with starting forwards Jones (1-for-7) and West (1-for-11) combining to go 2-for-18.

“Give credit to Cleveland for playing a better game than we did tonight,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “Kyrie Irving was terrific.”

Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com.

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