The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Opponents will be in defending champions’ faces
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
- William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part II
The Cavaliers have a 2-0 lead over the Indiana Pacers, yet fans are worried. This is Cleveland, so something has to be wrong, right?
Well, maybe there is. The Cavaliers had to use every ounce of their energy again to hold off the Pacers on April 17 to win, 117-111 at The Q.
Defending an NBA championship is not easy. It hasn’t been done since the Los Angeles Lakers won back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010.
“When you win a championship, they always talk about you’re the defending champions,” Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue said on April 17 before the game. “With that comes a lot of responsibility, having to play and compete hard every single night. You’re going to get everyone’s best shot for 82 games with players and teams coming at you.
“That being said, this was our first season to get a look at that and see how it feels. We handled it well sometimes. Sometimes we didn’t.
“The playoffs is a chance to hit the reset button. It’s a breath of fresh air for us. It’s a chance for a clean slate — 0-0 — first one to win 16 games (is champion).”
Lue set goals for the Cavs before Game 2 with the Pacers.
He wanted his team to shoot better from the foul line (14 of 27 in game 1), hustle to loose balls better (11 turnovers in Game 1 led to 19 Pacers points) and be more aggressive on the offensive boards (the Cavs had 10 in Game 1, two fewer than Indiana, and six of them were by Tristan Thompson).
As much as anything, Lue wanted the Cavs to attack for four quarters and not fade in the final 12 minutes as they did in Game 1
and as they did twice late in the regular season.
The free throw shooting improved — 20-of-23 led by Kevin Love going 12-for-12 at the line — but that was the only box Lue was able to check. The Cavs were lazy on their glass, grabbing only seven offensive rebounds. The Pacers converted 19 turnovers into 24 points. A 96-78 lead after three quarters shrunk to 109-104 with 2:28 remaining.
In the end, though, the Cavs hung on to win, and as the final horn sounded, LeBron James, with an underhand motion threw the ball upward toward the rafters, as though happy the
game finally ended.
The pressure is going to keep mounting as the Cavaliers climb the playoff ladder in the conference playoffs. Can anyone in the East beat them four times? Probably not. But that really doesn’t matter, because winning the East doesn’t make them champions.
A year ago, the Golden State Warriors had the responsibility of defending the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Then they put additional pressure on themselves by winning a record 73 games in the regular season.
The Warriors were confident they would repeat when they took a 3-1 Finals lead
back to Oakland for Game 5. But the Cavaliers won there, and when the Cavaliers won Game 6, that confidence wilted like a flower that hadn’t been watered. I was at that postgame press conference at The Q and saw the doubt in the eyes of Warrior guards Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
The Cavaliers are going to face more challenges, tougher challenges, than the ones the Pacers have given them. No team is afraid of them.