CLEVELAND, Ohio – It would be a stretch to say the Cavaliers won this one without LeBron James.
James no doubt factored into a 109-97 win over the Indiana Pacers Saturday night, he just wasn't the factor.
And for a young, suddenly rapidly improving Cavaliers team, this is an important distinction.
For the first time in now eight victories, James wasn't his team's leading scorer or co-leading scorer. It was the first time the Cavaliers won a game in which James finished with less than 20 points – he had 19.
Coming into Saturday night, James was averaging 31.6 points in Cleveland's seven wins and 19 points in seven losses. Against Indiana, Kevin Love registered a season-high 28 points and 10 rebounds, while Kyrie Irving added 24 points and tied a career high with 10 rebounds.
James contributed seven assists and two rebounds in about 32 minutes. There's a catch – he, umm, ahem, sat the whole fourth quarter – but this is the first time all season in which the Cavaliers could honestly say he wasn't the primary reason they won.
And James could unquestionably say the burden wasn't primarily on him.
"We're going to have games like that, and we need it," James said afterwards. "We need balance. We're going to have guys that lead in points or in rebounds or in assists, whatever, on different occasions. Every game presents different challenges and for us, I'm not one to really care about if I'm the leading scorer or whatever the case might be. I'm out there making plays to help our team win."
In one sense, James' minutes may have been the determining factor in his stat line. Love, who was averaging 16.5 points coming in, played about 33 minutes and Irving played 36.
"Probably if he had played his normal minutes he'd a been in the 25 to 28 point level," Cavaliers coach David Blatt said. "He just did his job well enough early, together with the other guys."
But the Pacers had something to do with James' numbers, and that's another reason why this win could be viewed as such a big step.
The first quarter was mostly a rip-roaring affair, with James fooling the entire Indiana team with a no-look pass to Irving while he was staring at and motioning for Shawn Marion to cut. James also had a steal and a dunk, doing his part as the Cavaliers raced out to a 19-point lead. Love scored 16 in the first quarter alone.
After that, though, Indiana transformed the game into a grind-it-out, halfcourt slog, and it hurt the Cavaliers for a while. Indiana's Solomon Hill kept James in front of him and held him to just eight points through two quarters.
James only took two free throws, a sign of how difficult it was for him to get into the lane. The Pacers nearly caught the Cavs in the first half. Irving limited further damage with 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting.
In Cleveland's previous three victories, James scored 32, 29, and 29. Asked about his big scoring games prior to playing Indiana, James credited the Cavaliers' defense, which was creating opportunities for him to run in the open floor.
But against the Pacers, those opportunities were fewer. So in the third quarter – James' best – he started working for points inside and wound up with 11. Two came on a drive when he went right at Hill for a layup.
To repeat: 16 points for Love in the first. Eleven for Irving in the second. Eleven for James in the third. An equal answering of the bell, if you will, enough so that James could take the rest of the night off.
"That will serve us well going forward," Blatt said. "We hope to get his minutes down this year, and I think so far on average we're meeting that, but it's only because of games like this where we play well enough that we can take him off the floor and give him the chance to rest."
Indeed, James' minutes have fallen from 39-40 minutes at the season's start to 37.4 minutes per game currently. But in Wednesday's blowout of Washington, James sat about half of the fourth quarter; he idled for all of the fourth in Monday's walloping of Orlando and in the Nov. 15 manhandling of the Atlanta Hawks.
Consider James' minutes and output in high-stress wins this year: 42 minutes, 36 points in a six-point win in overtime against Chicago; 40 minutes, 22 points in a nine-point win over Denver; 40 minutes, 32 points in a seven-point win over New Orleans; 41 minutes, 41 points in a one-point win over Boston.
Irving matched James in points against New Orleans, but James added 11 rebounds and nine assists. So those weren't just long minutes for James, they were difficult, too.
Also, consider what James went through with the Miami Heat last year. The 2,902 minutes he logged were not only the eighth-highest in the league, but Dwyane Wade played about 1,200 fewer minutes. It meant more high-stress minutes for James.
More wins with less stress for James is a good thing for a 29-year-old whose body is older from pounding from playoffs and Olympic tours.
One more thing about "stress." Until Saturday night, if James wasn't dominating the scoring and taking over the game, a ton of stress was placed on the Cavaliers.
So much, in fact, that they collapsed and lost. Every time.
They now have proof they can win when James, for whatever reason, isn't putting the ball in the hole.