The Cleveland Cavaliers are in Los Angeles for a few days, knocking out their lone road games against the Clippers and Lakers. On Thursday night, the Cavs played Game 1 of the Tinsel Town trip, a 109-102 win over the Lakers that brought them back to .500. On Wednesday, much-maligned head coach David Blatt surprised the team with a practice at the UCLA campus — something the players were not expecting the day before a game. That “practice” never took place, as it was actually a ploy to get the team together for a bonding exercise at a Hollywood bowling alley:
“I was like, ‘Where are we going?'” Tristan Thompson recalled to Northeast Ohio Media Group. “I was confused.”
Head coach David Blatt had something up his sleeve. When the bus finally stopped, it was in front of a bowling establishment in Hollywood. To their shock, they learned practice was never in the plans. It was about getting away from basketball and bonding as a team.
While bowling is never not fun, if you’re not used to it, you’ll most certainly feel it the next day in your arm. In the case of an NBA player in the middle of the season, that can severely affect a shooting hand — especially with a game just 24 hours later. One player seemed so concerned that he bowled with literally the lightest ball they have: the 6-pound weenie ball.
“It (bowling) didn’t seem to affect too many people’s jump-shots. This man (J.R. Smith) was throwing a six-pound ball around,” Love revealed. “Those events are fun. We were able to go out there and bowl, eat bad food and enjoy ourselves. It had us loose for the game.”
Just kidding, of course J.R. Smith bowled with a 6-pound ball. I bet he does it all the time, too. Just fires it in there like a fastball. It probably doesn’t even hit the lane until three feet in front of the pins. Also, maybe this is why LeBron was in such a good mood last night.
[Cleveland.com, photo: Garrett Ellwood/Getty]
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