Nothing Cleveland’s Alonzo Gee tried bothered Paul Pierce in the least as the Celtics’ veteran forward, who has torched the Cavs so many times in the regular season and the playoffs, went off for a season-high 40 points to lead the Celtics to a 103-91 victory. Pierce made 13 of 16 shots, six of seven 3-pointers as the Celtics snapped a three-game losing streak to improve to 13-12.
“I was like, ‘Man calm down a little bit,'” Gee said with a smile. “He said, ‘I’m just trying to make you better.’
“It’s all good though. He played a great game and made a lot of shots.”
Too many — and he had a lot of company. The Celtics made 37 of 62 field goals (59.7 percent) and nine of 17 3-pointers (52.9) as the Cavs dropped their fifth straight game to fall to 5-22.
“I know they’re a good team,” Cavs coach Byron Scott said. “But I know we can play better defense, too. That’s been the case the last two games. We can’t go into games thinking we’re going to outscore people. We don’t have the personnel to do that right now. But we can compete on the defensive end every night. When you allow a team to shoot 60 percent, most games you’re going to lose.”
Despite Pierce’s performance, the Cavs actually made a game of it after the Celtics took their biggest lead at 80-60 with 3:16 left in the third quarter. Pierce was on the bench by that time, and the Cavs responded with a 20-2 run to close to within 82-80 on a three-point play by rookie Tyler Zeller with 9:04 left in the fourth quarter.
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