Was anyone else as shocked as I was that the Cleveland Cavaliers clearly stopped trying with over a minute left in a season ending game while only down 9 points? I guess Lebron and the boys didn’t get the memo about how Tracy McGrady scored 13 points in 35 seconds to help the Houston Rockets win an unlikely game down the stretch against the SA Spurs back in 2004. Or maybe they did get the memo but just weren’t hungry enough for a title to bother trying. Personally, I found it disrespectful to the game. And if I was a big Cleveland Cavaliers fan (which i’m not), I would have lost my mind.
All night I was left wondering what the reasons were behind the lack of motivation to ‘play hard till the final buzzer sounds’. Then this morning I stumbled across this blog that cracked me up with their Top 11 Reasons Why the Cavs Quit in Game 6. The first few are below:
11) Knew that they didn’t stand a chance in one of the two games this year where Rasheed Wallace tried
10) Watched enough film of the 2009-10 Celtics to know that they never, ever had problems finishing games
9) LeBron’s flight to New York, Chicago, New Jersey, Dallas, Denver and Los Angeles was leaving soon
8 ) Halfway through the fourth quarter, coach Mike Brown told them that he was coming back next year, no matter what
7) When two-fifths of the starting line up is Antwan Jamison and Shaquille O’Neal, you should not expect much in the way of stout behavior in an elimination game
6) Team was really only trying until James got his triple double
5) Team just wanted to be closer to JJ Hickson on the bench, who played for less than a minute in this game, despite being, unlike O’Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas, alive
To check out the rest of the reasons why the Cleveland Cavaliers may have gave up early in defeat last night, head over to Five Tool Tool blog…
