CLEVELAND: At Monday morning’s shoot-around, LeBron James was all business, the playoff stare already on his face.
His answers were short. He refused to discuss last year’s postseason series with the Atlanta Hawks, or any incendiary comments made about him in the past by the Hawks’ Kent Bazemore.
Below the surface, it seemed as if anger or determination were bubbling, like James had something to prove.
His Cavaliers teammates may have picked up on that feeling. They came out showing no rust from an eight-day layoff, building an 18-point lead in the third quarter.
But they couldn’t sustain it. James stumbled and bumbled in the fourth quarter, missing shots, even a driving layup, and throwing bad passes that led to turnovers. The Hawks went ahead for the first time in the game with about eight minutes remaining.
The Cavaliers’ lack of killer instinct, an issue all season, didn’t cost them in their first-round sweep of the Detroit Pistons. But Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals at Quicken Loans Arena was another matter.
The Cavs’ 104-93 victory served as a wake-up call that overconfidence in the postseason could mean a much earlier exit than expected for the conference’s top-seeded team.
“Whenever you get a team to 15 points, they are almost dead,” veteran forward Richard Jefferson said. “When you get it to 18, all you’ve got to do is lift the shovel up and pour dirt on ’em, especially if you want to be a high-level team. We didn’t do that tonight and it almost cost us.”
After a masterful defensive showing in the first half, the Cavs suddenly had no answer for the Hawks’ silver-streaked Dennis Schroder, who hit a career-playoff high five 3-pointers, topping his previous best of two, and finished with a game-high 27 points.
After holding Paul Millsap and Al Horford to a combined seven points in the first half, they allowed them 20 in the second.
The troubles were mostly of the Cavs’ own doing. After 2½ quarters of masterful basketball, they fell apart, seemingly for no reason.
James and the Cavs found their footing in the final five rugged minutes. After J.R. Smith gave them a spark with a 3-pointer at the 3:32 mark, James dominated offensively and defensively. He scored on an and-one with 2:09 remaining and on a dazzling spin move in the final minute. He also knocked a ball out of Schroder’s hands for a key turnover.
But while the Cavs look to correct what went wrong in the final 1½ quarters, they need to remember what went right.
At the start, they played like they were tired of hearing what a greatly improved defensive team the Hawks were this season. The Cavs jumped out to an 11-point lead to end the first quarter. They held the Hawks to 30 percent shooting in the first half, 28 percent from 3-point range. On a Smith steal with 5:39 left in the first quarter, the Cavs swarmed, an intense effort by all five not seen in round one.
Atlanta guard Kyle Korver played 15 minutes in the first half and took only one shot. In the first 24 minutes, Horford was held to 0-for-6 shooting, Millsap to 2-for-10.
Offensively, Kyrie Irving started off just as dazzling as he had been against the Pistons, hitting 4-of-6 in the first quarter, 2-of-3 from beyond the arc, and finishing the first half with 12 points. That’s not to mention a sick crossover dribble that only lost some luster because he missed the shot after he got open.
James was also locked in, scoring 13 points in the first half and handing out five assists. The best was a powerful bounce pass to Jefferson for a stunning slam in the second quarter.
The biggest issue was Kevin Love’s continued shooting slump. He hit just 4-for-17 from the field (with 11 rebounds) after going 3-for-15 in Game 4 in Detroit.
But when the lead hit 18 points with 3:56 left in the third quarter, the Cavs looked as if they mentally checked out.
Coach Tyronn Lue had surely cautioned them about overconfidence, especially after they swept the Hawks last year in the conference finals and went 3-0 against them in the regular season.
“This is a good team. They hit their stride pretty well at the end of the season,” Lue said before the game. “They were playing well. We’re not going to overlook these guys. This team has our team’s attention.”
That sounded like coach-speak then. But after the Cavs’ third-quarter collapse and fourth-quarter struggles, that’s certainly the case now.
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla.