Cavaliers weather third quarter Boston run to escape with 102-99 win; three takeaways

2. Third quarter collapse

It may be a Cavs team with eight new faces, but in the third quarter, they looked exactly like the 2016-17 squad.

Tuesday night was a game that shouldn’t have even been close, considering the Cavs were rolling with an 18-point lead.

The biggest killer in the third quarter, however, was turnovers. The Cavs and Celtics were tied with six turnovers apiece at the half. After the break, however, the Cavs began to get sloppy with the ball and coughed the rock up eight total times in 12 minutes. Those turnovers cost them 13 points and played the biggest part in their lead collapsing.

“It’s kind of been part of our identity I guess,” Kevin Love said. “In those third quarters we can always be hit or miss. So we let up a little bit. … We just got lackadaisical. They fought, they changed the tempo, played extremely hard and they fought back into the game.”

On offense, it also felt like Derrick Rose was the only guy in wine and gold playing with any sense of urgency with his drives to the basket, but he only managed to make two-of-six from the field in the quarter.

For Lue, pacing was more of an issue than anything.

“You know us, when we got the lead we started turning the basketball over, took some bad shots,” he said. “I thought our pace was really terrible tonight, I think we’ve got to get in better shape as far as pushing ourselves, not saving ourselves.”

“We want to play fast, we want to get up and down the floor,” he continued. “And I just thought tonight we settled and played a half-court game.”

While the way they coughed up their large lead obviously wasn’t ideal, it was still huge that they managed to escape with a win.

“Last year this is a game we would have lost,” Lue said. “So not playing well and beating a team like the Celtics, it’s a good start for us.”

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