The Cleveland Cavaliers took a 22 point lead at the half to pile on to a completely dominant performance in their Eastern Conference Finals game 1 win over the Toronto Raptors. The Cavs used a couple of fancy plays in the first half to keep the Raps guessing and Toronto never recovered, falling 115-84.
LeBron James scored 24 points in three quarters of action, shooting 11-13 from the field with six rebounds on the night. Kyrie Irving was the leading man on the evening, scoring 27 on 11-17 shooting. The third member of the Cavs ‘Big 3’ struggled in comparison to his counterparts but he scored 14 points on 4-8 shooting. All in total, nine Cavs scored at least five points as the Cleveland Cavaliers picked up where they left off before a long layoff following their second round sweep of the Atlanta Hawks.
James made his first nine shots, including a powerful dunk in the second quarter and the Cavs shot 67 percent from the field in the first half while improving to 9-0 this postseason. Cleveland is the first team to start the playoffs with nine straight wins since San Antonio reeled off 10 in a row in 2012 and Tyronn Lue joins Pat Riley as the only two coaches to start 9-0 in their playoff coaching debut.
Cleveland made just 7 of 20 3-point attempts as Toronto looked to focus their defensive effort on the Cavs long range shooting but that just allowed Cleveland to feast inside with dunks and layups, in particular from Irving and James.
DeMar DeRozan led the Raptors, scoring 18 points with five assists and Bismack Biyombo added 12 points. Kyle Lowry went back to his struggling ways, scoring only eight points on 4-14 shooting in his time on the court. This game 1 was a far cry from their game 7 performance in the second round against the Miami Heat.
Game two is on Thursday night at 8:30 PM ET on ESPN.
