Kyrie Irving scored 20 points with 10 assists to lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 104-101 victory over the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, March 6, 2013. With the win the Cavaliers improve to 21-40 on the season while the Jazz fall to 32-29.
View the official NBA box score here.
It was a team effort by the Cavaliers who received a solid performance from the majority of their starters. In addition to Irving’s 20 and 10, Tristan Thompson added 16 points and 12 rebounds, Wayne Ellington also scored 15 points, and Alonzo Gee contributed 15 points in the Cavaliers’ winning effort. Off the bench, Marreese Speights scored 14 points while C.J. Miles added 12 points to lead the reserves.
For the Jazz, it was the reserves that shined brighter than the starting five. Gordon Hayward dropped 25 points; Enes Canter added 17 points in just under 21 minutes on the court, while Alec Burks contributed another 14. Among the starters, Paul Millsap scored 16 while Randy Foye added just 11 points including 3-6 from behind the arc.
Coach Byron Scott did not relish in the win. In fact, he called the game a “gift” as the team did not start playing until the final 15 minutes. In the post-game press conference he stated:
“Tonight, I thought the last 15 minutes is when we started playing. I thought we were just going through the motions for a while. Even late in the third quarter when I told them ‘We have 15 minutes to start playing because right now you’re showing no interest in this game, and I’m hoping that we have enough time.’ Then they started playing. We got lucky and that was a gift basically. I told them after the game that we can’t come out and play like that and expect to come back and win a basketball game. We have to play with that intensity level for 48 minutes. We can’t try to turn it on and off.”
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