After suffering an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, it sounds like Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue is ready to make a change in the lineup, according to a report from ESPN’s Dave McMenamin.
The Cavs struggled to find a rhythm in Sunday’s 108-83 loss. The Celtics opened up a 21-point lead in the first quarter and never looked back.
As a team, Cleveland finished Game 1 with a 31-of-86 (36.0%) mark from the the field and went 4-of-26 from beyond the arc (15.4%). Furthermore, the Cavs gave up 60 points in the paint, which could be why coach Lue is considering a switch to Tristan Thompson.
Thompson played 21 minutes off the bench in Game 1, scoring eight points on 4-6 shooting to go with 11 rebounds.
Lue spoke to Cleveland.com about the decision:
“It’s definitely something we have to weigh,” Lue said. “We weighed it before the series started, but we’d won seven out of eight and we weren’t going to adjust until someone beat us and we didn’t play well with that lineup that got us to this point.”
Cavs All-Star LeBron James struggled a bit in Sunday’s game, though he said he has “zero level of concern” during his media availability. James logged 36 minutes, scoring 15 points on 5-16 shooting (0-5 from downtown), nine assists, seven rebounds and two blocks. Fairly solid, but the King also had seven turnovers and an overall plus/minus score of -32.
“I have zero level of concern at this stage,” James told ESPN.
“I’ve been down before in the postseason, but for me there’s never any level of concern — no matter how bad I played tonight, with seven turnovers, how inefficient I was shooting the ball,” James continued. “We have another opportunity to be better as a ball club coming in Tuesday night, and we’ll see what happens.”
If coach Lue decides to go with Thompson — and it sounds like he might — he’d likely be matched up on Al Horford, who played well against the Cavs on Sunday, racking up 20 points on 8-10 shooting, six assists and four rebounds. Thompson has played Horford well in the past. Let’s see if that trend continues.