CLEVELAND, Sporting Alert – LeBron James scored 24 points and dished out 11 assists to lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 107-87 victory over the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA on Thursday night. – Download Game Box Score
LEBRON RETURNS TO LEAD THE WAY
James, who missed the 106-100 defeat to the Houston Rockets on Tuesday night, moved into 12th place and above Dominique Wilkins on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 26,689 career points.
“It’s great to be in that position,” he said. “It’s an honor.”
The star forward shot 8 of 11 from the field and opted not to take any 3-pointers for the Cavaliers (53-22), who shot 32-percent from long-range on 12 of 38 shooting.
Kevin Love finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds while combining with Channing Frye to knock down seven of Cleveland’s 12 made three pointers.
Frye ended with 13 points and eight rebounds, with Kyrie Irving, who was questionable for the game because he was not feeling well, and Timofey Mozgov each scoring 10 points for the Cavaliers, who lead the Toronto Raptors by 2 1/2 games in the race for the No. 1 overall seed in the Eastern Conference.
“I would love to have the No. 1 seed,” James said. “I understand some of the players might need some rest over the last couple games, but we worked so hard all season to be No. 1.
“I’m never a guy (who wants) to finish second.”
Thaddeus Young scored 18 points and grabbed eight rebounds for Brooklyn (21-54), which collected 14 points from Bojan Bogdanovic and 13 points and eight assists from Shane Larkin.
Thomas Robinson added 10 points and 11 rebounds in the defeat for the Nets, who were losing three in a row.
The Cavaliers were avenging the 104-95 defeat they suffered in Brooklyn on March 24.
“We had a nice win at home and they weren’t happy about it,” Nets interim coach Tony Brown said after the game.
“And they showed us they weren’t happy about it tonight. We knew they would come back with a better effort.”
James and the Cleveland visit the Atlanta Hawks in their next outing on Friday. A victory for the Cavs in Atlanta will see them collected their 54th regular season victory this year, one more than last season and they would still have six games left to play after Friday.
The Nets will visit the New York Knicks on Friday as well.
In other NBA scores on Thursday night:
BULLS 103, ROCKETS 100
MAGIC 114, PACERS 94
PELICANS 101, NUGGETS 95
TRAIL BLAZERS 116, CELTICS 109
THUNDER 119, CLIPPERS 117
