Little Brother Leads Cleveland Over Clippers : Basketball: Gerald Wilkins outscores Dominique Wilkins by two points, and Cavaliers are 106-96 winners.

Dominique Wilkins tends to keep an eye on his younger brother, Gerald, but usually it’s from afar.

Tuesday night, it was up close, and Gerald Wilkins made it real personal.

He scored a game-high 28 points, 12 of them in a third-quarter run that sent the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 106-96 victory over the Clippers.

Dominique Wilkins led the Clippers with 26 points but scored only one point and missed four shots in the decisive third quarter.

The luster of playing one-on-one has worn off for Gerald Wilkins.

“Playing my brother is fun, but it is not an added incentive like it used to be, especially my first few years in the league,” he said. “In the past it used to be an individual thing. Tonight it was a team thing. They helped me, I helped them.

Still, Dominique Wilkins is his brother’s keeper.

“For the last 10, 11 games, they’ve been running a lot of plays for him,” Dominique said. “He’s a guy to run things for. He’s a great one-on-one player.”

Still, the bottom line was that the Clippers ended their final eastern trip of the season with their third loss in a row because they couldn’t maintain their momentum after taking a 56-52 halftime lead.

Cleveland led, 82-72, at the end of the third quarter.

Gerald Wilkins sank two three-pointers and all four of his shots from the field in the run, adding two free throws for the Cavaliers.

“Gerald hurt us badly, especially in the third quarter,” Clipper Coach Bob Weiss said. “He was hitting ‘threes,’ he was driving, he did it all.”

And the Clippers did little, particularly when Cleveland had the basketball.

“As for us, we didn’t execute and we didn’t play defense and you have to play defense in this league to win games,” Dominique Wilkins said. “Sometimes your offense isn’t there, but if you play defense you can still be in a game.”

The Cavaliers’ defense was better. Tyrone Hill was more excited about it than about his career-high 25 points.

“My job is to play defense, get the rebounds, get things going,” said Hill, who led Cleveland with 12 rebounds. “Getting some points is going to happen sometimes, and it did tonight, but it did because we settled down and played defense and took control of the game.”

A healthy Hill--he has just recovered from a thumb injury--has gotten Gerald Wilkins’ attention.

“The way Tyrone’s going, teams are going to start double-teaming him,” Wilkins said, “and that’s fine, with Mark Price, Terrell (Brandon) and me standing outside waiting for the open jump shot.”

John Williams had 15 points and 11 rebounds as Cleveland won its third in a row.