Cavs Booed by Home Crowd

Tony Dejak/AP

Cavaliers are booed by their own fans the game after David Blatt's firing - Tyronn Lue didn’t make much of a difference in his coaching debut for Cleveland after David Blatt was fired, as Pau Gasol scored 25 points, leading the Chicago Bulls to a 96-83 win over the Cavaliers on Saturday night.

Lue was promoted Friday, when the Cavaliers fired Blatt despite him taking the team to the NBA finals last season and currently leading the Eastern Conference. Lue admitted being nervous about sliding into Blatt’s seat, and while his team gave effort, the Cavaliers didn’t win.

In fact, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and their team-mates left the floor to a chorus of boos after shooting just nine of 22 from the free-throw line. “I’ve been booed before, along with a lot of these guys,” Lue said. “Every time I go to Philly I get booed, so, you know, that’s not a big deal. It’s something I got to deal with.”


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Lue wants his team to play at a faster pace than it did under Blatt, but the Cavs aren’t physically ready to up the tempo. “I don’t think we’re in good enough shape,” Lue said. “Early, we wanted to push it, we wanted to open the floor and we came out and did that and then we just dropped off the map. We got tired. I just don’t think we’re in good enough shape right now to play in the style that we want to play.”

James just missed his first triple-double this season, finishing with 26 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists. JR Smith added 18 points for the Cavs, who shot 37 percent from the field. “It’s a make or miss league and tonight we couldn’t make any shots,” James said.

Jimmy Butler scored 20 points, Nikola Mirotic added 17 and Taj Gibson 15 for Chicago, who opened a 17-point lead in the third quarter and never let the Cavs get closer than eight in the fourth.

“This was a big game,” Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said. “It’s a great sign when you come into a place like this that was buzzing. We went out and we were aggressive. We got that lead at the end of the first quarter and never looked back.”

Bothered by a lack of cohesion and chemistry in the Cavs, general manager David Griffin fired Blatt, a surprising move that came just days after Cleveland suffered a humiliating 34-point home loss to the defending champion Golden State Warriors. But Griffin detected deeper issues and felt he had no choice but to remove Blatt and promote Lue, a top assistant and former point guard who won two NBA titles as a player.

Lue’s got work to do, but he was mostly pleased with his team’s effort.

“I thought our guys competed,” he said. “I thought they went out and played hard and we just couldn’t make shots. I guess I consider this a big game and in a big game, we haven’t been able to make shots. Defensively it was great and just, offensively, we just didn’t make shots. We didn’t make free throws.”