NBA James held to 14, but Cavaliers beat Pacers

Cleveland won its fifth straight game.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Even though his shot wouldn't fall, LeBron James made sure the Cavaliers didn't drop, too.
James scored a season-low 14 points, but added nine assists and eight rebounds in 44 minutes as Cleveland won its fifth straight game, holding off the Indiana Pacers 94-89 on Friday night.
"I missed shots. I'm going to have off nights," James said. "But it doesn't matter to me as long as we win."
Drew Gooden added a season-high 21 points and 12 rebounds on a tender ankle and Larry Hughes had 18 points for the Cavs, who blew a 15-point lead in the fourth but made all the big plays down the stretch.
Pacers battle back
After the Pacers clawed back from down 22 to tie it at 86, James drove for a layup with 56 seconds left and was fouled by Jermaine O'Neal. He missed the free throw, but Cavs guard Eric Snow leaned in and drew an offensive foul on Jamaal Tinsley as the Pacers guard pushed the ball up the floor.
"Eric has been in this league for a long time, and that's because he plays defense," said Cavs forward Donyell Marshall. "He got a big stop at the end on Tinsley, that helped us win the game."
After Snow's savvy play, Hughes dropped a short jumper to make it 90-86. Stephen Jackson then missed a 3-pointer for Indiana, and the Cavaliers made four free throws, including a technical when Jackson was ejected with 10.8 seconds left to ice it.
O'Neal has season high
O'Neal scored a season-high 34 points with 11 rebounds and five blocks. Fred Jones had 15 points for the Pacers, who were just 4-of-19 on 3-pointers.
Indiana fell to 3-2 since forward Ron Artest said he wanted to be traded.
Marshall added 17 points and Zydrunas Ilgauskas 15 for Cleveland, which improved to 11-3 at home, and at 16-9, has the Eastern Conference's second-best record. The Cavs also avenged a 22-point loss at Indiana on Nov. 24.
"That was one of our biggest games of the year thus far," James said. "They're a good team even without Ron Artest. They came to play, and we came to play."
Trailing 76-61 at the start of the fourth quarter, the Pacers chipped away by forcing the ball down low. After Ilgauskas picked up his fifth personal and had to sit with 5:41 left, the Pacers scored seven straight points, pulling within 84-82 on Tinsley's 3-pointer with 2:58 remaining.
Ilgauskas returned and missed his first shot, and O'Neal's 14-foot jumper tied it 84-all with 2:16 to go, but he missed another one with 1:07 left and the Pacers couldn't get defensive stops when it mattered most.
"I thought our guys showed a lot of guts," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. "We had a chance. We gave ourselves a chance. Jermaine's shot would have given us the lead. We just got a little unlucky. It went in and out."
Didn't have to carry load
For a change, James didn't have to carry the scoring load and didn't force many shots. The Cavaliers improved to 15-3 when James, whose previous season low was 16, tries under 25 shots.
"They were running two guys at him, and he still made plays," Cavs coach Mike Brown said.
With Artest elsewhere, Carlisle assigned Jackson to James. It was a mismatch early on as James got his teammates involved by either blowing past Jackson or setting up the Cavaliers with crisp passes.
The Cavs were already ahead by 10 when James scored his first points, driving the lane for a thunderous dunk that Marshall followed with a 3-pointer to give Cleveland a 15-point lead.
James sat for a more than five minutes in the second quarter, but the Cavs extended their lead to 19 while their star rested. When he came back, James fed Marshall for the Cavs fourth 3-pointer of the period to make it 51-29.