National Basketball Association play-offs: Cavaliers shocked by Pacers

Well, it’s gonna take more than that.

The Pacers are feeling confident after beating the Cavs for the fourth time this season. The Cavs’ overconfidence is seen by their slow first quarter in which they were outscored by 19 points. He was 12-0 in his opening game of a postseason.

The 25-year-old was outstanding in his first year with the Pacers, setting career highs with 23.1 points, 4.3 assists and 5.2 rebounds per game in the regular season. In fact, it was James’ first first-round loss since 2012. He’s never lost an opening round series in 12 playoff appearances. Green’s minus-15 in his 27 minutes was the worst on the team, as he contributed almost nothing in the humiliating Game 1 loss. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with James, before rising up right in Jeff Green’s face.

Kyle Korver, battling a sore foot, was 0-of-3 with a turnover in four minutes.

Game 2 is on Wednesday night at the Quicken Loans Arena with tip-off scheduled for 12am BST.

The #Cleveland Cavaliers made a lot of changes throughout the 2017-18 National Basketball Association season in hopes that they could turn things around in time for the start of the National Basketball Association playoffs.

Oladipo was traded by the Thunder along with Domantas Sabonis over the summer for Paul George.

Cavs owner Dan Gilbert said last summer “that IN could’ve done better than it did”.

Pacers Coach Nate McMillan would hardly have been blamed for making sure, before the series, that Oladipo was reminded of being dissed by the owner of the opposing team, but McMillan said Sunday (via ESPN), “I haven’t used that type of information as bulletin board material”.

Aside from Oladipo, the Pacers were aided by key performances from Myles Turner (16 points, eight rebounds) and Bojan Bogdanovic (15 points, six rebounds). I’m tempted to go with the Cavaliers to bounce back with an emphatic win, but I think this one will be close till the end so I’m taking the Pacers with the points again. In the first quarter, Nance Jr. had six points and no one else had more than two. But as a team, the Cavs made just 8-of-34 shots from long range and shot 38.5 percent from the field. The quarter finished with the Pacers in a commanding position, leading 33-14. James and Love combined for two points – they belonged to James, on two free throws with 1:52 left. I was down 3-1 in the finals. He shot 0-of-7. Kevin Love, a champion, was 3-of-8. The Cavs missed all eight 3s.

The Pacers return home to Bankers Life Fieldhouse to host the Cavaliers in Game 3 of their best-of-seven series on Friday, April 20 at 7:00 PM ET. You get the idea. But the Cavs’ A game is still better than that of any team in the East, which will become obvious over the course of a seven-game series no matter which team they take on between now and June.