(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio-After winning game one on Sunday, the Cleveland Cavaliers were able to hold serve at home and come out on top in game two of their playoff series with Boston by beating the Celtics Tuesday night, April 21, at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, but just barely. It took almost the entire 48 minutes for the home town Cavaliers to put a hustling, scrappy, youthful Celtic team away, 99-91.  (Editor's note: The Cavs also won game three against the Celtics on Thursday, April 23, winning 103-95. This article addresses game two of the NBA Eastern Conference playoffs because game two is where the analogy of winning, or barely winning, can be seen more objectively. An eight point spread in wins two and three for the Cavs is not an indication of howwell they will do in the playoffs in the long run. The playoffs competition will get tougher, if the Cavs beat the Celtics by winning the best of a possible seven games to qualify for additional playoffs series).

Game two was much closer down the stretch than the final score indicated. Just as they did in game one of this best of seven series with the Cavs, the Celtics attacked aggressively from the outset, both offensively and defensively. After game one Celtic forward Jae Crowder said that “ they have holes in their defense and we need to find them” Early on in game two they did just that. With 5:38 left in the first quarter Boston led 16 to eight .

The Celtics were able to penetrate into the heart of the Cleveland defense early and often by passing or driving into the lane for easy shots. Boston's center, former Cavalier Tyler Zeller had eight points in the first quarter that were all close to the basket. Careless passes and sloppy dribbling by LeBron James and Kyrie Irving led to steals and turnovers, which Boston took advantage of by turning those turnovers into early offense.

The first quarter ended with Boston leading 26 to 25. The Celtics took a nine point lead early in the second quarter as the Cavs went cold shooting from the field, especially from three point range. Some of the missed pointers led to easy baskets by Boston scoring often in transition. The Cavaliers responded after going down by nine and put 26 points on the score board in the second quarter to take the slimmest lead at 51 to 50 at the half. The Cavs were able to go inside to Timofey Mozgov in the first half when their three point shooting went cold. Mozgov proved to be a load for Zeller to handle, scoring 10 points in the first half and finishing with 16 points, seven rebounds, and five blocked shots.

Mozgov's scoring inside helped, but could not make up for all of the three pointers that were missed. Three point scoring had been a major part of the Cavaliers success during the second half of the regular season when they went 34 and nine. Tuesday night, the three point shots were clanging off the rim frequently as the Cavs made only seven out of 29. Kevin Love and JR Smith, who have been counted on to give the Cavs three point shooting and floor spacing, were a combined two out of 13 from three point range.

In addition, the Cavaliers bench contributed only seven points compared to the 51 scored by Boston's bench. Matthew Dellavedova chipped in five of those points and Iman Shumpert scored the other two. This put a lot of pressure on James and Irving to score, and score they did. James tallied 30 points and Irving had 26 for the game.

The Celtics kept coming back in the second half and cut the Cleveland lead to two, 82-80 in the fourth quarter, then James and Irving took over. No one else scored for Cleveland in the fourth quarter except Irving and James. Irving and James scored nine and 15 points respectively in the fourth. In fact Love and Smith were the only other Cavaliers who took a shot in the fourth quarter and they both took only one shot. In contrast nine of the 10 Celtics that played scored before the end of the first half.

Although they were under sized, the Celtics stayed in the game by collecting 13 second chance shots with 13 offensive rebounds. Now this series moves to Boston for games three and four on Thursday, April 23, and Sunday, April 26, at 1 pm Eastern Standard Time on ABC local television.

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)