CLEVELAND: His star point guard is still injured and his star power forward wasn't feeling well and couldn’t make a shot. So Tyronn Lue did the only thing left: He turned to his last remaining healthy body and his undersized rookie point guard. Then he sat back and watched James Jones and Kay Felder spark the Cavs on a night few others could.
LeBron James scored 26 points and Channing Frye added 14 off the bench and the Cavs escaped with a 90-82 victory Monday against the New Orleans Pelicans on a night they struggled shooting. They may not have won if not for guys like Jones and Felder.
Kevin Love scored 12 points and grabbed 11 rebounds before departing for the locker room late in the fourth quarter because the team said he was ill. He shot just 5-of-19 and missed all seven of his 3-point attempts. The starting backcourt of DeAndre Liggins and Jordan McRae combined to shoot just 2-of-10 in 34 minutes and neither appeared in the fourth quarter. The Cavs shot 37.8 percent – one of their worst-shooting nights of the season.
All Cavs players not named Frye were a combined 0-for-17 shooting 3s when Lue inserted Jones with 2:32 left in the third and the Cavs trailing 65-61. Jones played just eight minutes, but made his first 3-point attempt, then followed it up with a defensive poke away that forced a turnover and an assist to James at the other end.
Felder entered two minutes into the fourth and promptly made his first basket. He scored 12 points, including eight in the fourth quarter. In two games since he erupted for 33 points in a Development League game, Felder has averaged 10.5 points after averaging 5.4 for the season.
Anthony Davis scored 20 points and grabbed 17 rebounds and rookie Buddy Hield scored 20 points for the Pelicans, who had their four-game winning streak snapped on a night both teams missed plenty of open looks. New Orleans shot a season-worst 36.4 percent.
The Cavs had so few healthy bodies that Lue had to scrap the team’s traditional morning shootaround, instead electing for a pregame walkthrough. He has done it a couple of times this season and conceded he may do it more often moving forward. On this night, however, only Felder and Frye shot better than 50 percent.
“We have 10 guys and we’re playing nine,” Lue said. “Just getting extra rest. .. We will just see how it looks (with no shootarounds). I will look at doing that a few more times.”
James shot 9-of-21, grabbed seven rebounds and passed for six assists. But he struggled establishing a rhythm until the fourth quarter on a night Kyrie Irving missed his second game with a right hamstring injury. The team is still classifying it as “tightness” in the hamstring and Lue wouldn’t offer a timetable for his return, even though he initially didn’t believe Irving would miss any time at all with the injury.
McRae dazzled starting in place of Irving in Saturday’s win at Charlotte, scoring a season-high 20 points. But he reverted back to his season-long struggles against the Pelicans, managing just four points on 1-of-5 shooting.