Tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET the banged up Cavaliers return home to Cleveland where they will host the Chicago Bulls in Game 5 of their hard-fought Eastern Conference quarterfinals matchup on TNT, which can be live streamed free by clicking this link. Bulls fans can listen to the radio broadcast on ESPN 1000, while Cavaliers fans may do likewise on WTAM 1100.
The Cavaliers evened the series on Sunday with a buzzer-beater by LeBron James , but they left the contest worse for the wear. Kyrie Irving is battling both tendinitis and a foot injury, while James is nursing a sore ankle after turning it.
James also had to overcome his own coach; David Blatt had called for James to inbound the ball on the game-deciding play, but was overruled by the star player.
"I told Coach (David Blatt) there was no way I'm taking the ball out unless I could shoot it over the backboard and go in," James said. "So I told him, 'Have somebody else take the ball out.' The play that was drawn up, I scratched it. I just told Coach, 'Just give me the ball. We're either going to go into overtime or I'm going to win it for us.'"
The Bulls aren't unscathed either. They're expected to be without big man Pau Gasol yet again while he heals up from a strained hamstring. Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson were able to replicate his rebounding, but the Bulls sorely lack his ability to score. Combined Noah and Gibson put up just 14 points while reserve Nikola Mirotic was 1-of-9 from the field in 18 minutes.
"Pau, the way that he scores, just his presence on the floor, the way that he shoots the ball, rebounds the ball, is huge," Bulls guard Derrick Rose told the team's official website. "But I think the guys who stepped in did their jobs and they played well. We lost the game, for sure, but I love our mentality."
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