Written by Brent Pollakoff at FoxSports.com
Opening Night in the NBA began with the Cavaliers getting their championship rings, and ended with the Warriors getting destroyed at home by the Spurs.
Here are takeaways from all three of Tuesday night’s games, beginning with Cleveland’s dominant win over the Knicks.
LeBron and the Cavaliers already look unstoppable
The Cavaliers looked every bit like defending champions during a dominating 115-84 win over the Knicks, and the way they’re already firing on all cylinders, it’s clear that injuries will be the only thing capable of stopping this Cleveland team in the East.
LeBron James once again looked like the league’s best player, dunking at will and using his incredible court vision to set up his teammates for easy looks. James finished with a triple-double line of 19 points, 11 rebounds and 14 assists.
It took a while for the shots to begin to fall, but for a Cavaliers team that returned all of its key rotation players from last year, the chemistry was evident from the very start.
Kyrie Irving went on a tear in the third quarter, when he scored 19 of his game-high 29 points to help put the contest out of reach. It was only one game, and it was against a disjointed Knicks team. But the Cavaliers showed what we already knew: They’re the clear favorites to finish first in the East.
The Knicks are kind of a mess. Here’s why.
While the Cavaliers looked like a cohesive team full of talented players who had played together for an entire season, the Knicks were essentially the exact opposite. Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah both missed extensive time in training camp, and New York looked like a team unfamiliar with each other in what was an inevitable blowout loss.
New York had already committed 10 turnovers four minutes into the second quarter, and assisted on just seven of its 17 made shots in the first half due to a lack of ball movement and too much isolation in the team’s half-court sets.
On the bright side, Carmelo Anthony got off to a strong offensive start with 11 first quarter points, and Rose had no trouble using his speed to get to the rim as often as he liked. But the fact that the Knicks aren’t close to having a bench rotation in place is another concern, and one that’s going to take some time to figure itself out.
Damian Lillard will demand our attention
Damian Lillard is possibly the most overlooked star player in today’s NBA. He was somehow snubbed from the All-Star team last year after averaging a career-best 25.1 points and 6.8 assists, but he seems more determined than ever to gain the attention he deserves.
Lillard lit up the Utah Jazz for 16 of his game-high 39 points in the fourth quarter on Tuesday, while engineering a 17-point turnaround for his team over the game’s final 11 minutes.
Lillard has stated that his goal is to win MVP this season, and numbers like that will get him into the conversation as long as the wins are there, too.
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