LeBron James bullies Orlando Magic late, Cleveland Cavaliers win 98-89

The Orlando Magic had the lead most of the way, but the Cleveland Cavaliers were a train coming. LeBron James took over in the 4th quarter and ended the Magic’s hopes at a win.

Hate to say you could see it coming buuuuuuuuuuuuut, you could see it coming. The Cleveland Cavaliers were coming. LeBron James was coming.

James scored 15 fourth-quarter points and the Magic stopped running their offense as the Cavaliers toppled the Magic 98-89. The aforementioned James led the Cavaliers with 29 points and eight assists while the Magic were led by Nikola Vucevic, who nearly came away with a triple double with 12 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.

LeBron James (CLE) — 29 pts., 8 assts.; Kevin Love (CLE) — 22 pts.
Tobias Harris (ORL) — 16 pts.; Evan Fournier (ORL) — 15 pts.

Early on, the theme of this game was established. The Cavs defense was not good enough to stop the Magic if they kept moving the ball and the Cavs would keep themselves within LeBron James’ striking distance at the free throw line.

The Magic scored 32 points in the first quarter thanks to excellent ball movement as they assisted on nine of their 13 field goals and it gave the Magic a 32-27 lead after one. The second and third quarters were nearly identical as Orlando nearly pushed its lead to double digits, but free throws helped the Cavs rally back as the Cavaliers shot 14 free throws combined in those quarters.

Fast forward to the fourth quarter. How does a team that so easily picks apart another for three quarters suddenly start struggling?

Well, the unfortunate reality for the Magic was that Victor Oladipo just cannot set up the offense effectively or consistently. I could count on my fingers the amount of times that Oladipo made his first pass before 12 seconds or less were left on the clock. He froze out his teammates and nobody moved off the ball.

It has become clear that Oladipo just cannot effectively run the offense and is not benefiting demonstrably from playing point guard anymore. If anything it is hurting him overall because his confidence is being crushed.

On the Cleveland side, it was all LeBron. He shot 11 of Cleveland’s 26 free throw attempts and closed out the game scoring or assisting on 20 of his team’s final 23 points. Orlando was no match for LeBron in the fourth quarter tonight.

Game Notes:

• Dewayne Dedmon was excellent tonight. Have no idea why the Magic went away from him in the second half. Jacque Vaughn said after the game that Cleveland’s decision to run LeBron James at power forward contributed to putting Ben Gordon in the game over Elfrid Payton. This could be a likely reason for Dedmon’s late-game absence.
• Channing Frye, Ben Gordon and Evan Fournier were also great tonight. It is a shame that Gordon and Fournier’s minutes came at the expense of the only point guard on the team playing in Elfrid Payton. Vaughn cited floor spacing as the reason for Gordon getting the call over Payton in the postgame.
• Kyle O’Quinn had a bad night. He was in foul trouble throughout and hit the side of the backboard on a corner three.
• Oladipo jammed on LeBron tonight. LeBron hit Oladipo flush on the arm (No foul called) lost the ball, regained possession and dunked it.
• The Magic need to practice how to run a fastbreak. We have seen it before but there were at least two times tonight where the Magic screwed up easy transition points.

Rookie Report:

Elfrid Payton: Payton did not play all that well offensively tonight. He turned the ball over five times tonight. Some of those were bad decisions on his part and others were times where his teammates could have helped him out. Defensively he did a great job of keeping his hands active. He racked up a couple deflections and forced a few turnovers by poking the ball loose on double teams.