TUESDAY’S GAME
Cavaliers at Spurs, 8 p.m., TNT Thomas, who was traded by the Celtics to Cleveland for Kyrie Irving. “That’s what we laid our hat on, so it’s not about me stopping anybody. You’re not stopping just one person and not one person is stopping me, so that goes on the other end as well.
“Stopping Westbrook, he gotta stop me too and that’s with any guard in this league, but in Boston we were just a better defensive team. We played a lot harder. We have the guys to do that on this team. We just gotta do it.”
Lue said he likes “who we have” on the team before the game, and blamed the reshuffling of lineups and rotations because of the return of injured players like Thomas and Tristan Thomp- son for stunting the team’s momentum.
But after Saturday’s game, Lue cited matchups and the players’ inability to play one- on-one defense. Matchups and defensive skills won’t improve on this team without trades.
“We just gotta be better,” Lue said. “I think it’s tough for us one-on-one wise guarding the ball, one-on-one defense. I think a lot of times with our closeouts, it’s tough. We’ve got a lot of guys who are clos- ing out to guys who can shoot it and drive it. Puts a lot of pressure on your defense, so, we just gotta continue to keep working at it and look at different things to make us better.”
James’ final synopsis: “It is what it is.”
“I can’t break,” he said. “I’m the last one that can break at this point. I’m the leader of this team. Hope- fully we can get some wins and that definitely helps, but I’m going to stay as positive as I can be.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was asked in London last week about fining misbe- having players, and even he acknowledgedthe penalties aren’t much of a deterrent.
“More symbolic than anything,” Silver said.
It might be time for the league to change that.
At least based on what’s happened in the NBA the past couple of days. The postgame locker-room incident that involved players from the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers last Monday — the holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., no less — was a bad look for the league, as was the wild swing Tuesday that Orlando’s Arron Afflalo threw at Minneso- ta’s Nemanja Bjelica.
The James Johnson-Serge Ibaka dustup during the Miami-Toronto game last week earned those players one-game suspensions and cost them a total of about $300,000. Utah’s Rodney Hood might have been lucky to have been fined only $35,000 for slap- ping a phone out of a fan’s hand. Ben Simmons and Kyle Lowry were probably smart to just talk about taking their differences outside, and not actually go that route.
The Rockets’ TrevorAriza and Gerald Green were suspended for two games, with the NBA coming down hard on both for what the league said was a “hostile, verbal altercation” with several players in the Clippers’ locker room. But the Clip- pers-Rockets circus, what- ever it was, has to be of major concern to the league.
Players are upset with referees, and that airing of grievances will be aired offi- cially in meetings with the league at All-Star weekend. Whatever the players say in Los Angeles might seem less credible now, especially after the last few days. Furthercomplicating matters is that Rockets star Chris Paul — president of the National Basketball Players Association — recently called out referee Scott Foster, plus allegedly had a role in the postgame events Monday.
Raining 3s: Chic ago’s Lauri Markkan e n got to 100 3-pointers made faster than any rookie in NBA history, needing 41 games to get there.
Reminder: He’s a 7-footer. Dirk Nowitzki’s single-season record of 3s by a 7-footer has stood since 2000-01, when he made 151. Markkanen is on pace to smash that mark, as the trend of 7-footers having crazy range continues.
Through midweek, 28 players 7-foot or taller had made at least one 3-pointer t his season — already a record, topping the 22 who made one last season. Also, 7-footers combined to make 1,100 3-pointers last season — and the pace this season is closer to 1,500.
There have been more 3s made by 7-footers in the last two seasons than in the first 28 seasons of the 3-point shot combined.
Remembering Jo Jo: The Celtics announced the death Tuesday of Jo Jo White, a seven-time All-Star, twotime NBA champion, MVP of the 1976 NBA Finals and Olympic gold medalist. The ex-guard went into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015. “We are terribly saddened,” the Celtics said. “He was a champion and a gentleman; supremely talented and brilliant on the court, and endlessly gracious off of it.”