NEW YORK: Kyrie Irving arrived for the team’s morning shootaround early Friday to get some extra work in. He was the first one out of the locker room during halftime to get some extra shots.
By the fourth quarter Friday, all of the extra shots paid off. Irving scored 32 points, including 16 in the fourth quarter of the Cavaliers’ 116-108 win over the Brooklyn Nets as they await the arrival of Kyle Korver. It was Irving’s first game back after missing three with a tight right hamstring. After a sluggish 4-of-14 start in the first half, Irving caught fire.
His consecutive 3-pointers in the fourth extended the lead back to 14 after the Nets cut an 18-point lead down to six. LeBron James scored 36 points, grabbed nine rebounds and passed for six assists and Kevin Love had 17 points and 13 rebounds after missing one game with food poisoning. Love was so sick he came close to driving himself to the emergency room in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
“I’ve never had food poisoning quite like that where every few minutes, it’d come right out,” he said. “Sit back down, come right out. It was bad. But feel good now.”
Love lost 10 pounds through the ordeal, but has put most of that back on.
He needed IV bags on three separate occasions and couldn’t estimate how many total bags were used. By playing Monday against the New Orleans Pelicans, he set back his recovery a bit and was forced to miss Wednesday’s game against the Chicago Bulls.
Love is a health nut who eats a lot of fish, but a bad piece of sea bass on the flight home from Charlotte on New Year’s Eve has at least changed that temporarily.
“I was sitting there watching the game the other night and just trying to get some rest, get some food,” Love said. “I tried to even just take a bite of fish, but it wasn’t happening for me. I had to do my chicken noodle soup and the BRAT diet [bananas, rice, applesauce, toast]. I was on that for a few days.”
The Cavs should get an injection of talent at some point on this trip. The team is expected to finalize the trade with the Atlanta Hawks to acquire Korver on Saturday, at which point he’ll have 72 hours to report. The Cavs play at the Phoenix Suns on Sunday and at the Utah Jazz on Tuesday. His debut should come no later than Wednesday at the Portland Trail Blazers.
“Great move,” said Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said of the Korver trade. Atkinson was an assistant coach in Atlanta for four years. “I’m very familiar with Kyle and I think we all make a mistake if we just think Kyle is a shooter. That guy, he’s a better all-around player than people think. He’s a better defender than people think, better passer. Just a really great IQ and he’s going to help them in so many ways. So I think it was an excellent move on their part and he’s going to really help that team, especially when playoff time comes.”
Jason Lloyd can be reached at jlloyd@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Cavs blog at www.ohio.com/cavs. Follow him on Twitter www.twitter.com/JasonLloydABJ.