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The Cavaliers have been known to get hot from the three-point line, but what they did Sunday night was, in the words of Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy, “spectacular.”
Playing infront of a rowdy Cleveland crowd, the Cavaliers tied a league record by shooting 11-13 from beyond the arc in the opening quarter and never looked back, blowing out the visiting Clippers 114-89.
The Cavs led 46-20 after the first quarter thanks to their plethora of long balls. LeBron James scored an incredible 23 points in the period, hitting 5-6 of the three-point line.
The All-Star forward made four of those threes during a two-minute spurt midway through the quarter. Most of his attempts were several feet behind the three-point line, including one from 30 feet.
“There’s no description for a player getting in a zone like that,” said James after the game. ”It just happens. I was doing it in the flow and not forcing anything. When it happens, you just know and it feels great.”
Daniel Gibson, Anthony Parker, Jamario Moon and Jawad Williams also got in on the long-ball action as each of them made at least one three in the historic quarter.
“It was just a matter of us moving the ball and guys were getting open,” said Gibson. ”When it’s rolling like that, shooting is contagious. Everybody just started letting it fly.”
The Cavaliers shot 76 percent from the field during the quarter, and although they would cool down as the game went on, their early efforts were enough to cruise to a victory.
“They hit some shots in that first quarter that, I know in 30 years of being in the NBA, I have not seen a team shoot and make some of the shots they made,” said Dunleavy. “Our guys tried to fight back, then LeBron did what he does.”
James didn’t do a whole lot of scoring the rest of the night.
He finished with 32 points and 11 assists and didn’t take a single three-pointer after the opening 12 minutes.
At halftime the Cavaliers held a 67-39 and appeared to be on cruise control. Although the game never got closer than 11 points in the second half, the Clippers did their best to make things interesting.
They outscored the Cavaliers 28-16 in the third. Baron Davis scored 11 points in the quarter, mostly on open jumpers or layups, and the Cavaliers went a chilly 1-5 from the three-point line.
“I thought that obviously in the third, we slipped up a little bit,” said Brown. ”The Clippers made their run, but it was good because in the huddle, I just kind of stood back and watched to see how our team would react.”
The Clippers made the score 92-81 on an Eric Gordon free throw midway through the fourth quarter, but that was as good as things would get for Los Angeles.
The Cavaliers went on a quick 10-0 run spearheaded by James and Shaquille O’Neal to put the game out of reach.
O’Neal scored six points and grabbed four rebounds in the final quarter to bring his game totals to 16 and 12, respectively.
The 7-foot-1 center has now scored in double-figures in eight-straight games, all Cavaliers wins.
With Chris Kaman missing his second-straight game due to an ankle injury, O’Neal was guarded by second-year pro DeAndre Jordan, who was no match for the three-time Finals MVP. The Clippers double-teamed O’Neal most of the game to try and take some pressure off their young center, resulting in some open jump shots for the Cavaliers.
“They doubled Shaq and we swung the ball and got it to our shooters,” said James. ”We’ve got some great shooters on this team, and it was great to see what we were able to do.”
O’Neal finished with three assists, two of them coming on first-quarter threes.
“I was always taught to make your teammates better,” said O’Neal. ”At the tender age of 38, I don’t really like to take bad shots. A lot of times I could have shot over the top, but I have some of the best shooters in the game on my team.”
The victory gives the Cavaliers a 13-2 record in the month of January as they continue to lead the way in the Eastern Conference, even with the loss of several key players to injury.
“To have two main guards, one all-star and one that started all last season, go down with injuries and guys step up to fill their shoes is great,” said James. ”We just kept flowing.”

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