All the different articles on the Cavs Sweep of the Hawks right here for you on one site!!
Pity the poor Cleveland Cavaliers. All they’ve done is win every one of the eight playoff games they’ve played by double digits — something no NBA team has ever done — and what do they get for their troubles? A bunch of people bloviating about how maybe it would be better for them if they lose a game.
You’re going to start hearing that line of non-thinking any day now, if you haven’t already. It’s the standard fall-back position for commentators everywhere whenever a team makes winning look too easy.
And for the first two series of this postseason, the Cavaliers have made winning look as easy as brushing their teeth. Eight games, eight wins. They’re playing like the 76ers of 1983, when Moses Malone so eloquently explained his team’s playoff goal: “Fo, fo, fo.” That was when just three series led to the championship. Today, it’s fo, fo, fo, fo. No fis or fums need apply.
As things worked out, the 76ers played four, five, four, going 12-1 on the way to Dr. J’s only NBA title. But no one suggested they needed to lose a game to refocus themselves or somehow ensure victory.
Nor did anyone on the 2001 Lakers cite that team’s one loss in a 15-1 postseason as the reason Los Angeles ultimately stormed to a title. The only thing the Lakers’ one loss and the Sixers’ loss in their near-perfect runs proved was that the other teams are trying to win, too, and sometimes they accomplish that.
Still, the idea that teams that win too easily and too often could be in danger of collapsing once the pressure mounts refuses to die. There’s a certain specious logic to it. It goes like this: Sooner or later, every team gets challenged in a championship run. And if a team has had too easy a time of it, it won’t be prepared to meet that challenge.
It sounds so good, but it’s so utterly wrong. Nobody ever said losing builds character after winning. That’s a line you use to find something good about a loss. If losing were such a valuable life experience, every team would give the entire starting unit the day off once in a while — just so that the team can benefit from the salubrious effects of a good thumping.
I’m not suggesting the Cavaliers will go 16-0 in these playoffs. It is possible but unlikely; possible because neither the Celtics nor the Magic have shown that they can sustain excellence in every game of a long series, unlikely because both Boston and Orlando have shown that they can play at an extremely high level — when the stars and planets are aligned just right.
If you’ve watched much of the Cavs so far, though, you don’t get the feeling that losing a game will do anything other than anger LeBron James, who shows every night why he’s the NBA’s 2009 MVP.
Cleveland isn’t a great basketball team — not yet. They have King James, the greatest example of power, speed and all-court skills the game has ever seen. But they do not have a second great player to complement him. What they have is a great mix of youth and experience, size and quickness. Mo Williams and Delonte West are an excellent guard combination, either one of whom can play point and both of whom combined for 29 points a game during the season. Zydrunas Ilgauskas is fragile, but he’s a big man with excellent shooting range and superior ball-handling skills who also rebounds. Anderson Varejao provides enormous energy and great offensive rebounds at power forward. And James does whatever the heck he wants to do.The Hawks played as good a game as they were capable of in their Game 4 loss. They even had a seven-point lead at the end of the first quarter, the first time in the series they had led at the end of a quarter. But at the end, James took the ball, drew half the defense to him, and either took it to the hole with three guys hacking him and trying to tackle him, or dished to a teammate standing all alone beyond the arc for an easy three.
The game was close, but never in doubt, and in the end, the Cavs won by double digits again. The reason it wasn’t in doubt is the same reason they have no intention of taking a game off — LeBron.
He’s coming of age in these playoffs, and the Cavaliers are responding to his lead. They play the best defense in the NBA. They out-rebounded the Hawks by double digits. In the final minutes, when the Hawks had to get the ball back, Cleveland got three consecutive offensive rebounds — and three more 24-second clocks.
At no time have they looked like a team that needs to lose, just to remember what it feels like. They look like a team that is intent on giving no one even the slightest shred of hope.
And now they’re looking like a team that’s going to go home, take a day or two off, then get back to work while waiting to see who emerges from the Boston-Orlando season to try to do what no one has yet been able to accomplish this year: Not to win a series, but to win a game.
Cavs' sweep not a celebration, just another step in humble title quest.
By Bill Trocchi, SI.com
The Cavaliers advanced to the Eastern Conference finals by pulling out another gutty road win and extending their playoff win streak to eight games. Right?
"We have nothing to celebrate. What is there to celebrate? We have bigger goals than this. We won a game and we're moving on. That's about it," said center Zydrunas Ilgauskas after the Cavs' 84-74 victory (RECAP | BOX).
Guard Mo Williams, who burned the Hawks' double-teams of LeBron James with four three-pointers, agreed with his big man.
"It is not a celebration because this is not home for us. This is not where we want to be," he said. "Home for us is holding up that ball (the NBA championship trophy). That is when our celebration starts. That is all that we think about."
Such is life with the favorites to win the NBA crown and end the city of Cleveland's championship drought. Eight straight wins, all by double-digits, and it is met with a collective shrug of the shoulders. Things are going so well for the Cavs right now, they can have almost twice as many turnovers as their opponents, miss 12 free throws and still stick a road 'W' in their suitcases and head back to Cleveland.
"We ought to feel good about this win, because we got it in an ugly manner," said Cavs coach Mike Brown. "I'm sure Atlanta probably feels like they didn't play their best. I know offensively, we didn't play our best."
The possession that officially clinched the Cavaliers' four-game sweep took a remarkable 64 seconds. Leading by five with 1:56 to play, the Cavs milked the clock before James drove to the hoop and missed a layup. Anderson Varejao was there for the rebound, and the Cavs reset. James again ended up driving with little time on the shot clock, and again Varejao was there to tip the rebound. He missed his attempt, but Ilgauskas grabbed the ball and kicked it out. With the shot clock running down a third time, James was doubled in the corner and hit Williams for a back-breaking three. Cavs 82, Hawks 74, 52 seconds to play. Hello, Eastern Conference finals.
James did not dominate as he did in Game 3, but he still managed 27 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. Delonte West was the Cavs' other star, going for 21 with six assists in 45 minutes. Included in there was a baseline slam over Marvin Williams early in the fourth quarter that James said surprised even West.
If the Hawks were able to knock down a few more open jumpers, their season would not be over. They shot 32 percent for the game, including a woeful 2-for-13 from three-point range. Josh Smith scored 26 and had eight boards, and Joe Johnson squeezed off 18 points around the tight defense of West.
"The effort was definitely there tonight," Johnson said. "They got a lot of loose balls, a lot of hustle plays that they beat us to. If I know my guys, I think this will leave a sour taste in our mouths all summer."
The Cavs still have plenty of basketball left to play. The Magic or Celtics are the next obstacle standing in their way. The Atlanta sweep already seems like a thing of the past.
"Why should we celebrate?" James said. "We are a team that is fighting for a championship. Advancing is advancing, whether it is four games or seven. We're not taking it for granted. We're excited we're playing great basketball. But we are not satisfied."
Stud of the Night
Delonte West. The Cavs guard had 21 points, six assists and four rebounds in 45 quality minutes. West's dunk early in the fourth quarter came with the Cavs clinging to a two-point lead, and his defense on Johnson all series was a big factor in the sweep. "Defense wins championships, and that's what I want to do. I want to put a ring on my finger," he said.
Dud of the Night
Mike Bibby. In what could have been his final game as a Hawk before he hits the free-agent market, Bibby had three points in 31 minutes and shot 1-for-6 from the floor. The point guard also had just one assist. "If I did anything more than I did tonight, I think we would have had a good chance to win the game," he said.
Turning Point
With 10 minutes to play, the Hawks trailed 64-62 and allowed just two points in the next 3:30. Unfortunately for them, they came up empty at the offensive end on seven straight possessions, missing a golden opportunity to seize control from the temporarily out-of-sync Cavs. A James three snapped Cleveland from its funk and the Hawks were never closer than four again.
Stat of the Day
The Cavs outscored the Hawks 11-2 to start the second quarter when James took his only rest of the game.
Courtside Confidential
As he did prior to Game 3, James tossed in an underhand shot from the intersection of midcourt and the sideline during warmups. It took him seven attempts on Monday, four more than Saturday. ... The jumbotron tried to draw inspiration for the Hawks from other notable underdogs such as the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, Appalachian State and the New York Giants.
Looking Ahead
Cleveland will enjoy another mid-playoff vacation, as it waits for the Eastern Conference finals (starting as early as Sunday) against the Boston-Orlando survivor (series tied at 2). Will the layoff hurt? It certainly did not seem to affect the Cavs against the Hawks after they sat idle for nine days before the series. For the Hawks, it's time to reflect on a season where they improved their wins by 10 and advanced a round further in the playoffs. "I told those guys in the locker room I don't want them hanging their heads," said Hawks coach Mike Woodson. "This was a positive year for the Atlanta Hawks."
Mission accomplished … sort of.
www.espn.com
The Cleveland Cavaliers completed a four-game sweep of the Atlanta Hawks with an 84-74 win to advance to the conference finals, but they weren't exactly popping champagne corks afterward.
"Why should we celebrate?" LeBron James asked after the game. "We're trying to win a championship. We're excited because we're playing great basketball, but we're not satisfied."
At least this time the Cavs showed they could grind out a tough win, rather than blowing another overmatched team off the floor.
"Sometimes you have to win ugly like this, and it's good to know that you can," Cavs coach Mike Brown said. "I'm sure Atlanta feels like they didn't play their best. I know offensively we didn't play our best. But the way we defended tonight allowed us to make some mistakes."
"Some" might be an understatement: Cleveland shot 14-of-26 from the line, including three straight misses by Wally Szczerbiak and Zydrunas Ilgauskas to end the first half, and committed 18 turnovers. But in a contest that looked more like a Grizzlies-Wolves game in mid-January than a second-round NBA playoff game, it was ultimately Cleveland's airtight defense that allowed it to complete the sweep. The Cavs held the Hawks to 31.5 percent shooting and permitted only 36 points in the second half.
"Our defense allowed us to turn the ball over 18 times for 22 points, to shoot 53 percent from the free throw line," Brown said. Those are not impressive numbers at all, but in the playoffs on the road, you have to have an anchor. Our guys have that, and they believe in it."
It was the first real test of the postseason for the Cavs, who had posted double-figure wins in their first seven playoff games. This went in the books as a double-figure win, too, but it wasn't decided until Mo Williams hit a 3-pointer with 52.1 seconds left to put the Cavs up by eight.
That shot ended a fateful 63-second Cleveland trip that featured two of the defining elements of this series -- the Cavs owning the boards, and Cleveland attacking the defense of Atlanta's Mike Bibby. The possession began with 1:55 left and the home crowd in full lather after the Hawks cut the deficit to 79-74, but Anderson Varejao and Ilgauskas each rebounded James misses to keep the possession alive for more than a minute.
Then, after a foul on Joe Johnson created a dead ball, the Hawks failed to go offense-defense and take Bibby out of the game. Cleveland created a switch that left Bibby guarding James in the post, Atlanta doubled, and when the next-closest defender, Josh Smith, turned his head to call out a rotation behind him, James snapped a pass out top to Williams -- who took advantage of the extra split second it took Smith to react to nail a backbreaking triple.
"It's a game of inches," James said. "I see a lot of plays before they happen. I knew the double was going to come, and I knew Mo was going to have an open look because they weren't rotating quick enough to our guards."
The two offensive rebounds on that trip were symptomatic, as well: Cleveland owned the rebound battle 48-33, after doubling the Hawks' rebound total in Game 3. Varejao and Ilgauskas combined for 21 of those boards, including 12 on the offensive end.
"We realized we don't want to have to jump with these guys on every possession, we need to put a body on somebody and then go pursue the rebound," Brown said. "Once we decided to do that, we had some great results."
However, the reason the Cavs were in that game at all by that point was because of their suffocating defense -- one that completely eliminated the Hawks' secondary scorers. Although Johnson (7-of-18) and Smith (8-of-16) shot reasonably well, their teammates were a ghastly 8-for-39. Starters Bibby, Al Horford and Marvin Williams combined to score seven points on 2-for-19 shooting.
"It goes all the way back to childhood: Defense wins championships," said Delonte West, who guarded Johnson for most of the series. "We've been learning that since day one."
Unusually, James was more good than great in this one -- he finished with 27 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, but shot only 9-for-22. He even committed three fouls, after being whistled for just 10 in his first seven playoff games combined.
Nonetheless, the Cavs will get another long layoff before they play Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. That game might not be for nine days, depending how the league's other second-round series play out, so rust is a concern going forward.
"We have to manage our time correctly," West said. "We have to get some days of rest and some days where we get a good sweat in."
As for the Hawks, they bow out after exceeding all expectations and making the second round of the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Plus, it might be the second year in a row they got knocked out by the eventual champion. But injuries to starters Johnson, Williams and Horford made an already difficult task all but impossible against the Cavs.
"I just wish we had a healthier team," Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. "It's hard to judge our team in this series, not being healthy. "
"We just didn't have enough. They're playing at a very high level, and they have a legitimate shot at winning the title."
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