{"id":18857,"date":"2014-10-07T01:10:10","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T07:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=18857"},"modified":"2014-10-07T01:10:10","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T07:10:10","slug":"lebron-returns-blatt-bests-former-team-as-cavs-cruise-past-maccabi-tel-aviv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/lebron-returns-blatt-bests-former-team-as-cavs-cruise-past-maccabi-tel-aviv\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron returns, Blatt bests former team as Cavs cruise past Maccabi Tel Aviv"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(JTA) &#8212; The Cleveland Cavaliers in LeBron James&#8217; return to his hometown NBA team routed Maccabi Tel Aviv in a game that pitted the Cavs&#8217; new coach, David Blatt, against his former squad.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, James scored 12 points in playing only the first half of the 107-80 victory over the 2014 Euroleague and Israel Super Basketball League champions.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition game had been scheduled long before Blatt signed on as Cavs&#8217; coach in June. For Blatt, it was his NBA coaching debut.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I was nervous before the game, but not because it was the first time I coached in the NBA,&#8221; Blatt told reporters after the game. &#8220;I was playing against my friends.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>James, who returned to Cleveland as a free agent after spending four seasons with the Miami Heat, has been bothered by back problems.<\/p>\n<p>More than a dozen of the credentialed reporters were from Israel, including the major newspapers and television stations, according to the Cleveland Jewish News. Blatt conducted a second news conference in Hebrew for the Israeli media following the game.<\/p>\n<p>The game was also billed as Jewish Community Night.<\/p>\n<p>About 50 pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside Cleveland&#8217;s Quicken Loans Arena before the game over comments Blatt made to an Israeli newspaper in the summer in support of Israel&#8217;s military operation in Gaza.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"LeBron%20returns%2C%20Blatt%20bests%20former%20team%20as%20Cavs%20cruise%20past%20Maccabi%20Tel%20Aviv\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1491],"tags":[1009,6128,1957,456,8790,8795,6123,5524,1961,8788,1096],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18858,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions\/18858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}