What was Tristan Thompson thinking when he found himself on the 3-point line guarding Kevin Love, the NBA’s leading scorer, with two seconds left and the Cavaliers clinging to a 93-92 lead over Minnesota on Monday night at The Q?
“High-hand contest, be the second one off the ground and hopefully he misses,” Thompson said with a smile. “You kind of get a little antsy, especially with Kevin Love — a lot of pump fakes, jabbing at you pump fakes. You’ve just got to stay down. With my length, I can afford to be the second one off the ground.”
The Cavs young power forward could afford to smile after Love’s miss off the back rim secured the one-point victory and prevented Cleveland from squandering a 23-point third-quarter lead. That brought back bad memories of last season, when the Cavs lost four games — to Phoenix, New York, Miami and Indiana — after leading by at least 20 points.
“It’s in the back of your mind a little bit,” Thompson admitted, “but with coach [Mike] Brown’s concepts and us growing as a team right now and becoming closer together … we’ve been in situations so we know how to handle it. It’s great for us to be in this kind of test again.”
The Cavs managed to pass this test. Brown knows that didn’t happen last season.
“From watching the tapes this summer, when I watched them last year, that would have been a loss — possibly — and maybe by double digits,” Brown said as the Cavs evened their record at 2-2 with both victories coming at home. “But we just kept scrapping and scrapping.
“I thought there a lot of good things in the ball game. It’s great that we got a win. Obviously, we’ve still got to figure out how to close games out the right way on both ends of the floor, but the bottom line is we had to get a stop to win it and our guys somehow, some way managed to get a stop.
“Yes, people are going to say, ‘You shouldn’t have been in that position anyway.’ I’m not running away from that. But the fact is we were there and we finished the game. It was a great learning and growing experience for our group. Hopefully we can build on that so if we’re in that position again — especially in the near future — we’ll be able to do some things different down the stretch.”
C.J. Miles had 19 points, including seven in the fourth quarter for the faltering Cavs. Kyrie Irving had 15 points, eight rebounds and six assists, but he also had nine turnovers, three in the last 3:24. Thompson had 12 points and 12 rebounds. Anderson Varejao had 12 points and six rebounds. Andrew Bynum finished with 10 points and four rebounds in 18 minutes — all season highs. It was the first time he played in both halves — about nine minutes in each.
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