James guides Cavs past Sonics

Larry Hughes had 25 points on 11-of-16 shooting and Zydrunas Ilgauskas netted 17 for the Cavaliers, who have won two in a row and four of their last five contests.

"Great team effort tonight," said Cleveland head coach Mike Brown. "Eric Snow, defensively, you don’t stop a guy like Rashard Lewis. Here’s a guy who in my opinion is an NBA All-Star, 6-foot-10...He helped keep a guy like that or contain to 10 points on 3-of-12 shooting...Whoever the other team’s best post perimeter player is, he steps up and does it night in and night out."

Chris Wilcox had a team-high 20 points and pulled down seven boards while Mickael Gelabale added 16 points and eight rebounds for Seattle, which has lost three straight games.

"It makes it tough when they made shots early," said Seattle head coach Bob Hill. "They had good momentum. But we didn’t make shots and put them in transition and they got some easy buckets too. You got to kind of blame that on us when we couldn’t get a second shot and we couldn’t make a shot."

Leading 12-8, the Cavs used a 17-9 run, including six points from James and five from Hughes, to take a 29-17 lead. Cleveland led 35-28 after the opening 12 minutes of play.

Gelabale’s layup narrowed the gap to 46-39, but the Cavaliers went on an 18-6 spurt, which began with Hughes’ three-point play. His jumper a little more than two minutes later pushed the lead to 15, 56-41, and Ilgauskas’ layup capped the burst for a 64-45 halftime lead.

Both teams came out cold in the second half, as Damien Wilkins tallied the first field goal of the third at the 8:34 mark. Cleveland didn’t score for a full minute more.

The Cavs outscored the Sonics 21-16 in the stanza to take an 85-61 lead into the final frame.

A pair of Wilcox free throws brought Seattle within 98-84 with 4:17 to play, but that was as close as it would get.

Game Notes

Cleveland is 8-0 this season when it scores at least 100 points...The Cavs are 22-2 in their last 24 home games, including 11-2 this season...Seattle’s Earl Watson scored 10 points...The Cavaliers connected on 54.2 percent of their shots from the field, while the Sonics shot an abysmal 36.5 percent from the floor...Cleveland won the rebounding battle, 45-40, led by 13 from Anderson Varejao.