The Cleveland Cavaliers picked up one of their biggest wins of the year on Wednesday evening. Trailing by 15 at the half against the first-place Toronto Raptors and having allowed 79 points at the break, Cleveland managed to fight back over the game’s final 24 minutes to pick up a 132-129 victory. Per usual, LeBron James led the charge, going for an insane stat line of 35 points, 17 assists, and seven rebounds, with zero turnovers.
It was the kind of win that can lead to a whole lot of optimism in Cleveland, especially as the team sits in third place and looks like it might have to fend off a few teams to keep spot in the top-4 down the stretch. It’s especially the kind of win that gets interim head coach Larry Drew excited, to the point that he thinks this can alter the course of this season.
Drew, who is filling in for Ty Lue while he is away from the team due to health concerns, told the media after the game that he believes this game could have potentially been a turning point.
“I always say there is one game during the season that changes your team,” Drew said, according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “That game can be early, it can be midway, it can be late. There’s always one game that kind of changes your team, the mindset. And I really believe tonight’s game might have done that for us.”
Cleveland has certainly gone through a myriad of struggles this season, but it has to be reassuring that the group could fight back against a Toronto squad that it might have to beat if it wants to win the conference for the fourth straight year. Of course, this is just Drew’s opinion on the matter, which James made it a point to stress after being told of his coach’s comments.
“Turn around the season? We only got like 11 games left,” James said. “The season is almost over. So we want to continue just to work [on] our habits, and we’ll see what happens.”
He might not agree with Drew, but at the very least, he does seem more receptive to the idea of this than he was of a potential change to the league’s playoff format.
