Cavs nab third straight win

The Cavs picked up another win at home against a bad team.

That’s three straight wins for the Cleveland Cavaliers after they beat the San Antonio Spurs XX-XX on Sunday in Cleveland.

Nightly Notables

Jarrett Allen had another monster game, finishing with 29 points and 16 rebounds. Donovan Mitchell had a quiet game by his standards, but finished with 17 points and 9 assists. Caris LeVert and Sam Merrill added 23 and 19 points off of the bench, respectively.

Well, that happened…

LeVert deserves real credit for the Cavs’ win.

He, along with Merrill, were the two scorers who pushed the Cavs to a win. At the end of the first, LeVert had six points in 2.3 seconds to cut the Spurs’ lead to four. He made it a small, but not insurmountable, deficit after one instead a double-digit disadvantage like that.

LeVert would hit another buzzer beater at the end of the third quarter, pushing the Cavs’ lead from one to four.

This is what LeVert offers this team. At times, he feels redundant on a team that has Mitchell and Darius Garland. The best version of him, probably, gets to cut loose more than he does on a Cavs team where at times he doesn’t really have the freedom too. But there’s also value in having him for games and stretches like this, where the Cavs are dealing with injuries and Mitchell is having a quiet game. That’s why he’s here.

Cleveland also got lucky down the stretch. The Spurs made a late run and, after cutting the Cavs’ lead to four, Cleveland inbounded the ball and they called a foul that probably wasn’t one. Upon a Spurs challenge, it ended up as a jump ball. The Spurs then turned the ball over with 10.3 seconds to go after stopping the Cavs, effectively ending the game.

Big Picture

Sunday marked three straight wins for the Cavs. All came against teams with a combined 11 wins in the Spurs and Washington Wizards, but wins are wins. wins, however they come, are all the Cavs really need right now as they try to maintain playoff positioning before Garland and Evan Mobley return. In a jam-packed Eastern Conference that doesn’t project to thin out in any way, that matters.

Up next: The Cavs are off until Thursday when they play in Paris against the Brooklyn Nets. Tipoff is at 2 p.m. EST.