The Cavaliers couldn’t quite pull off the upset on Wednesday night, but they did do something that they haven’t in the past two-and-a-half weeks: Have fun playing the game of basketball.
Despite James Harden’s mammoth 55-point performance, the Wine & Gold went toe-to-toe with the Western Conference heavyweights – clawing their way back from a two-touchdown deficit late in the third quarter and turning that into an 11-point advantage in the fourth before collapsing in the closing minutes.
When the smoke cleared, the Rockets had handed Cleveland its eighth straight defeat – a 116-110 nail-biter in a brief stopover at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse – but Harden, Russell Westbrook and Co.