James Is Injured in Cavalier Victory

The Cleveland Cavaliers showed they can win without LeBron James. They just hope they won’t have to keep doing it.

James had another big night with 29 points before spraining his right ankle late in the fourth quarter of a 102-96 overtime victory Saturday night, Cleveland’s first win at Utah in more than 14 years.

The 19-year-old predicted he would recover quickly.

“I’m a soldier. I got banged up tonight, but I was able to keep getting back up. I got up on the ankle injury, but I just couldn’t stand on it,” James said.

James, who was helped from the court, plans to play Tuesday when the Cavaliers are home against the Seattle SuperSonics. It will be their first game after a tough trip that almost got worse Saturday.

Cleveland trailed by 18 points at halftime but chipped away at the lead in the final two quarters as James recovered from a slow first half.

Instead of going 1-5 on the trip, Cleveland finished 2-4.

James was in the locker room during overtime when the Cavaliers came away with only their fourth road win of the season.

“Once we made it to the overtime, I knew we had enough firepower to come out and step up and just get us the win,” said James, who also had seven rebounds.

Carlos Boozer led the Cavaliers in overtime, scoring 10 of his 32 points. He also finished with 18 rebounds as Cleveland played most of the second half without center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who was ejected for fighting with Utah’s Greg Ostertag in the third quarter and Cleveland down, 58-42.

“I think it ignited us. We really started playing after that happened,” James said.

“I kind of like took over, then Booze took over in the overtime. That’s what we need. Everybody just made an impact tonight and we got the win. First one here since ’89.”

James was aware how long it had been since Cleveland had won at Utah -- a 113-110 victory in overtime on Dec. 11, 1989, in the old Salt Palace.

Andrei Kirilenko had 27 points and six rebounds for the Jazz.