Kyrie Irving’s late buzzer-beating 3 helps push Cavs past Suns
In his first three games after returning from a fractured left kneecap, Kyrie Irving at times showed brief flashes of his All-Star form, but mostly — and quite understandably — looked like someone shaking the rust off after some 6 1/2 months on the shelf and trying to find his shooting and playmaking rhythm after missing the first 24 games of the new season. If his finish to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Monday visit to Arizona to take on the Phoenix Suns is any indication, Irving might be getting closer to being his old self again.
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After missing Cleveland’s post-Christmas Day hangover loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday, Irving returned to the Cavs’ lineup on Monday — this time as a starter, a 2015-16 first — and came up huge in the clutch. He scored his team’s final seven points, highlighted by a big shot-clock-buzzer-beating 3-pointer that gave Cleveland a four-point lead with 21.9 seconds left:
It’d be something of an understatement to suggest that Irving’s triple is precisely what head coach David Blatt might have had in mind on the sideline, and Irving admitted as much after the game.
“Probably one of the ugliest possessions of my career right there,” Irving told FOX Sports Ohio’s Allie Clifton with a laugh. “You know, it ended with a big 3, but we were trying to run 1-3 pick-and-roll, I pump-faked twice with the basketball, and then I throw it to [LeBron James] and then [J.R. Smith] miraculously comes up with it, and then Kevin [Love] pump-fakes and he throws it to me, and the shot clock ends … and I’m just thankful, man. It was an ugly possession, but we got a score at the end, and we needed it.”
Ugly though it may have been, the trip put Cleveland up 99-95 and gave them the inside track on a victory that looked just moments before like it might have gone up in smoke.
A Cavalier lead that one stood at 11 was cut to a single point when Brandon Knight found the bottom of the net with a 3-pointer that made it 96-95 with 1:28 remaining in the fourth. After Irving and James both missed 3-point tries on the next Cavs possession, Phoenix came down with a chance to take the lead, and looked to have done just that on another Knight bomb … only for the bucket to be waved off when the officials whistled center Tyson Chandler for a moving screen on Cavaliers swingman (and his former New York Knicks teammate) Iman Shumpert:
Chandler was beside himself at the call, insisting that Shumpert was the one who grabbed him to initiate the tangle on the high screen rather than the other way around. Suns coach Jeff Hornacek sounded a similar note after the game, though he incorrectly identified Cleveland guard Matthew Dellavedova (who, to be fair, does find himself in positions like these a lot) rather than Shumpert as the Cav who wrestled with Chandler:
Suns coach Jeff Hornacek really didn’t like the illegal screen call late on Tyson Chandler, nor is he a Delly fan pic.twitter.com/n00BXLfTCy
— Jason Lloyd (@JasonLloydABJ) December 29, 2015
Whether you think Shumpert got too tricky or Chandler got too handsy, the result of the play was a 96-95 Cleveland lead rather than a 98-96 Phoenix advantage. Twenty-four seconds later, Irving dialed long distance to put the Cavs up by two possessions, wholly changing the tenor of the final minute.
Knight had a chance to get the Suns back within a bucket, but missed an open layup with 14 seconds left and a tip-in try three seconds later before booting P.J. Tucker’s pass out of bounds, returning possession to Cleveland with 11 ticks remaining. He’d foul Irving on the inbounds and watch as Kyrie drained both freebies, giving him a team-high 22 points in just 24 minutes to lead Cleveland to a 101-97 win that halted a two-game Cavalier losing skid.
Smith added 17 points on 5-for-11 shooting from 3-point range for the Cavs, who shot 17-for-41 from deep as a team en route to their seventh win in nine games. Love chipped in 16 points, seven rebounds and four assists in 25 minutes despite seeming to injure his right hand in the second half, while James added a somewhat quiet 14 points on 4-for-10 shooting with seven assists, four rebounds, two steals and a block.
Reserve forward T.J. Warren had 23 points with five boards in 27 1/2 minutes off the bench to lead the Suns, who are in the midst of a chaotic stretch that has seen disgruntled forward Markieff Morris suspended for two games after throwing a towel at coach Jeff Hornacek, star guard Eric Bledsoe lost to a torn meniscus, two of Hornacek’s top assistants fired and an embarrassing loss to the previously 1-30 Philadelphia 76ers.
Still, even with the walls seemingly closing in around him, Hornacek found positives in the team’s fight to come back from an 11-point deficit to give itself a chance to win in the end.
“It’s still a loss but it’s encouraging that we’re without Eric, we’re out there a lot of the time with Alex [Len] and Devin [Booker] and T.J., some of our young guys,” he said after the game, according to Paul Coro of azcentral sports. “That’s a good effort. You can’t fault that.”
Knight finished with 18 points on 7-for-18 shooting, while forwards P.J. Tucker and Jon Leuer each added 14 points and six rebounds for the Suns, who have now lost five straight to drop to 12-21.
After doing his part to help the Cavs improve their East-leading record to 20-9, Irving is expected to sit out Cleveland’s Tuesday meeting with the Denver Nuggets, as part of a better-safe-than-sorry “no back-to-backs” policy as he continues to work his way back from knee surgery. But with Cleveland’s schedule lacking back-to-backs over the next few weeks, that could be the last time we see the Cavaliers jump tip without Irving in the backcourt for a while; or, at least, that’s what Cavs fans thrilled to see Uncle Drew taking and making big late-game shots are hoping for, anyway.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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