CLEVELAND -- Cleveland Cavaliers starting power forward Jeff Green was not afraid to shoot the basketball in the early going of Sunday’s 98-80 loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game 1 of the first round of the 2018 NBA Playoffs, but many of his attempts came from beyond the three-point arc.
For the game, Green missed all of his seven attempts from the field, including an 0-for-3 showing from three-point range, and went scoreless over more than 26 minutes of action for the fourth-seeded Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena.
“I mentioned to Jeff to be aggressive,” Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue said. “I think we need him on the floor for another ball-handler when they’re pressuring our guards, attacking the basket and don’t just settle.
“Just be aggressive. If you’re going to make a mistake, make an aggressive mistake and he understands that. I thought defensively, he was pretty good, but offensively, just being more aggressive with the basketball.”
Green addressed the media following Monday’s practice at Cleveland Clinic Courts in Independence and admitted the struggles on the offensive end of the floor was due to nothing more than a bad day at the office.
“Just missed shots,” Green said. “I just chose the wrong game to miss shots. That’s about it.
“I just missed shots. I was wide open, so I’ve just got to make them next time.”
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Green was far from the only Cavaliers player to struggle in Sunday’s loss to the Pacers.
Small forward LeBron James led the Cavaliers with a triple-double of 24 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists, but he was the only Cleveland starter to score in double figures.
Cavaliers reserve shooting guard J.R. Smith scored 15 points in 29 minutes off the bench and hit three of Cleveland’s eight three-pointers in the loss. Reserve forward Larry Nance Jr. scored 10 points and pulled down five rebounds in 30 minutes.
“We’ve got to think about what they did to us in Game 1 and just move forward,” Green said. “We know what we have to do. We know how we’ve got to approach the game in Game 2.
“A lot of mistakes that we made on ourselves, a lot of things that we can control that we can get better on for Game 2. We have to be more aggressive, play with more of a sense of urgency, and we should be alright.”
One of the things Green plans on doing is putting behind him the struggles of Game 1 and continuing to shoot open shots if the Pacers slack off of him defensively.
“If they’re going to leave me open, I’m going to continue to shoot them,” Green said, flatly. “They’re going to fall, and then, they have to adjust. I’m not going to adjust to them. They’re going to have to adjust to how I play.”