The Cleveland Cavaliers will take on the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first to back-to-back matchups on consecutive nights.
One thing is for certain about Sunday night’s matchup with the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Cleveland Cavaliers want a better performance. Cleveland struggled in their loss to the New York Knicks on Friday and the Cavs desperately need a bounce back performance.
The Cavaliers ended up losing to a Knicks team that is better than their record shows and combined with their off night led to a blowout loss. Only three Cavs had 10 or more points, Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, and Jarrett Allen. The double-double machine that is Andre Drummond was held to 4 points on 2 of 7 shooting and was a non-factor on offense. Cleveland is going to need a turnaround from Drummond while SexLand does their usual thing.
The Cavs will have something tough competition from a Timberwolves team that is looking to get out of the basemetn of the Western Conference. At 4-14 their record is not impressive, but that does not mean they are not capable of pulling out a win. The Timberwolves are without Karl-Anthony Towns which will only make things more difficult for Minnesota. Towns is their leading scorer (22 PPG), and rebounder (8.5 RPG) while being third in assists (4.3). As far as active leaders go, D’Angelo Russell leads in scoring with 20.1 PPG, Ed Davis is their top rebounder with 5.6 RPG, and Ricky Rubio leads with 5.7 assists per game.
Cleveland will have two chances against Minnesota on back-to-back nights as they also face them at home on Monday. The Cavaliers have a legitimate chance to get back over the .500 mark by the end of both matchups and they cannot take this opportunity for granted.
