Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Knicks no match for Cavs in opener
CLEVELAND — Once the lights dimmed and delirium began to sweep through Quicken Loans Arena on Tuesday night, the New York Knicks retreated to the visiting locker room. They wanted no part of the ring ceremony, and they had no interest in bearing witness to the raising of a new championship banner.
Those rewards belonged to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Knicks have reason to feel cautiously optimistic about the season ahead, but the Cavaliers, with their 11788 victory, dealt them a dose of reality.
LeBron James notched the 43rd triple-double of his career, collecting 19 points, 14 assists and 11 rebounds, and Kyrie Irving finished with 29 points.
Carmelo Anthony scored 19 points in the loss, and Kristaps Porzingis had 16. Derrick Rose, in his first regular-season game with the Knicks, had 17 points.
The Cavaliers ran away with the game in the third quarter. Irving buried a three-pointer over the outstretched arm of Porzingis, the Knicks’ 7-3 power forward, and then sank a jump shot. The lead was 21. By then, many fans in the building were busy monitoring their cellphones for updates on the baseball game outside.
It was a wild night at the Q , as locals know the arena. Across the street at Progressive Field, the Cleveland Indians were facing the Chicago Cubs in
Game 1 of the World Series. After so many decades of futility, the city was awash in championship glory. The Knicks played a bit part.
Before the game, the Cavaliers celebrated last season’s run to their first NBA championship. As the Larry O’Brien Trophy sparkled under a spotlight, clips from their comeback against the Golden State Warriors in the finals played overhead on Humongotron, the arena’s flame-spewing video board.
Commissioner Adam Silver presented team owner Dan Gilbert with his championship ring. Gilbert made a pledge.
“Once this banner goes up, there’s only one thing left to do,” he said. “Repeat.”
The crowd liked that a lot. One by one, the team’s returning players came forward to accept their rings, each encrusted with 400 diamonds, the heaviest championship rings in league history. James, of course, was last. He took the microphone to thank the fans.
“At this point,” he said, “if you are not from here, live here, play here, dedicate yourself to Cleveland, it makes no sense for you to live at this point. Cleveland against the world!”
The crowd liked that a lot, too. Only then did the Knicks re-emerge from the locker room so they could run through their final warmups.
Before the game, Rose described himself as feeling nervous.
“But usually when I’m feeling those emotions, something good comes out of it,” he said. “This is a new beginning for me, and I can’t wait.”
He made the game’s delicate calculus sound so simple, but the Knicks have not been very good at math, assembling an 86-160 record over the past three seasons. Still, Phil Jackson, the team president, made significant moves in the offseason, trading for Rose and signing Noah, former teammates with the Chicago Bulls.
On Tuesday, the new-look Knicks were finally whole, and Rose scored the game’s first points. But both teams struggled to find their rhythm after so much pregame fanfare, combining to shoot 6 of 22 from the field before the first timeout.
Anthony was a source of stability for the Knicks, scoring 11 points in the first quarter, but the Cavaliers quickly ran out to a double-digit lead. Early in the second quarter, Rose lost the handle on his dribble, and the Cavaliers pounced, sending the ball ahead to James for a ferocious dunk.
Just when the game appeared to be slipping out of reach for the Knicks, Justin Holiday came off the bench to make back-to-back three-pointers, and Rose got to the rim for a layup.
Cleveland led by just three at halftime, but soon enough, James was back in the open court, soaring for dunks against an overmatched opponent.