Kevin Love solves a skit

It was a fun match… and very strange. The Cavaliers won (101-102) in Charlotte. They keep adding, competing with everything despite their plague of casualties. Still without Darius Garland, his new all star (and without Lauri Markkanen and, of course, Ricky Rubio and Collin Sexton) They played an important game and continue to be fourth in the East (32-21), with a margin (and 2-1 in the particular duel) over some Hornets that (28-25) link three defeats and are, suddenly, ninth in a Conference in which everything changes as soon as you blink. James Borrego’s men are a game and a half away from the sixth… but now they only have three points ahead of the eleventh, the first without play in. If the glass is half empty, half full, the next results will tell…

This, of course, will sting in Carolina. The Hornets trailed 17 points in the fourth quarter. In a stretch of nine minutes they turned a 67-84 into a 101-98, already within the last minute. A tremendous reaction led by Terry Rozier (24 points) and Kelly Oubre (21) that ended in a very bitter outcome for the locals, who lost because they were unable to close two attacking rebounds. First Jarrett Allen made it 101-100 and then Kevin Love cleared Brandon Goodwin’s mistake and received a foul that the referees, after review, considered a shot. The power forward he did not fail from the free throw line and gave his team the victory (he also scored 22 of his 25 points in the second half) because the alley oop to the desperation of the Hornets, at the last second, it came to nothing.

A day after staying out of the All Star (which will also be played in Cleveland), Jarrett Allen had 29 points and 22 rebounds. Evan Mobley finished with 8+8 and 5 assists for a team that, obviously, misses Garland a lot but got oil out of Charlotte, where neither Gordon Hayward, nor Miles Bridges nor a LaMelo Ball that finished with 15 points shone. 3 assists and 5/14 shooting. After getting rallied, the Cavs survived. To his failures, to the successes of a furious rival… already one of the strangest arbitration decisions in recent NBA history, one that the referees themselves recognized as soon as the match was over as a “failure” blamed on a “communication problem”. The play gave the Hornets four points, which went from -10 to -6 (84-90) with 4:44 left in the game.

A Hornets attack seemed to end (finished, in fact) when the ball went out of bounds. That’s what the baseline referee whistled. With the game already stopped, Terry Rozier launched a triple from the left corner, stuck to the Cavs’ bench. Ed Davis, center of the visitors, brushed him in a playful gesture. Rozier missed the shot with everyone standing still. But the referees they did not value that the game had stopped and punished Davis’s gesture validating Rozier’s triple, although he had failed, and adding a technique that gave an extra free throw to the guard of the Hornets, who signed a four-point play that stunned everyone. One of the strangest things that have been seen in the NBA in recent years, but one that was finally an anecdote because Kevin Love saved the furniture for the Cavs at the last second. Things…