Taunting us over LeBron

I know TrueHoop is one of the best NBA blogs out there, tested and approved by the Akron Beacon Journal's Brian Windhorst.

If Windhorst says it's a good source for NBA news, it's a good source for NBA news. That's how much I trust him with my basketball knowledge.

But, damned if TrueHoop still isn't affiliated with ESPN, and thus, still among the national media legion counting the ways that LeBron James could leave Cleveland.

Apparently, we in Cleveland shouldn't dread only the approach of the summer of 2010, when LeBron can opt out of his deal and become an unrestricted free agent. We should also fear the summer of 2009, when LeBron could express his displeasure with the state of the Cavs roster by telling Danny Ferry that he's not signing a new deal here come hell or high water, thereby forcing Ferry to trade him.

No rest for the weary. As long as LeBron stays in Cleveland, we will constantly be subjected to this relentless onslaught, LeBron's many escape hatches from the Cavs paraded in front of us for the pleasure of East Coast basketball fans who know, in their heart of hearts, that it would be best for the league if LeBron would ditch our little, nondescript Midwestern burg for the Knicks, Nets or Celtics.

East Coast basketball fans and scribes just want what's best for the NBA, after all. I got choked up as I wrote that. On vomit, not tears.

It's easy to count the ways LeBron could leave Cleveland when it's Sanitized For Your Protection. LeBron just takes off the Cavs uniform and puts on a Knicks uniform. Simple, right? LeBron saves the Knicks, and Cleveland ... well, who cares?

But this is what irritates me: TrueHoop can talk about LeBron demanding a trade from the Cavs like it's moving a chess piece on a giant table. But do you realize how cutthroat a move like that would be? Do you realize the set of brass ones it would take to go up to your boss and say "I think you've done a terrible job building a team around me, trade me now because I'm leaving."

Bridge nuked? Check. Now LeBron gets to head to his new team with a Jeff McInnis-esque reputation as an "independent contractor" who will simply demand a trade when he doesn't like a situation.

LeBron fancies himself a slick businessman. He'd have to know that treating the organization that drafted him with such coldness would be a bad move. The East Coast media might think Cleveland is an insect to be squashed in the world of sports, a doormat that can be trampled with no fear of retribution. But LeBron would have to be a better businessman than to callously demand a trade without seriously considering all options and discussing it with many different people.

These are the residual scenarios that are seldom considered when spinning the "Where Will LeBron Go?" wheel.

Most scribes who pen columns insinuating that LeBron's loyalty to the Cavaliers is hanging by a perpetual thread seem to come to the same conclusion: Danny Ferry is a dolt who has butchered the construction of the roster around LeBron. It's a sentiment shared by many Cavs fans who claim to know what's going on with the team.

(Keep in mind there are many Cavs fans who think Ferry is the one who let Carlos Boozer out of his contract. Hopefully those fans will arrive in 2008 any day now.)

I tend to defend Ferry in these matters, and I take a lot of heat for it. Why do I defend a GM who is viewed as so uniformly indefensible? I could go the route of blaming all the draft picks wasted by his predecessor, Jim Paxson, the Jiri Welsch trade that robbed the Cavs of two first-round picks in three years and the Boozer fiasco

But the missed draft picks were a big reason why the Cavs were bad enough to get LeBron in the first place, so it kind of becomes a Catch-22.

My reasoning for defending Ferry on roster matters is this: what more do you want from the guy? In two years, he infused the team with enough talent to allow Mike Brown to implement a defense that allowed LeBron to use his vast talents to beat a superior Pistons team and earn the franchise's first NBA Finals berth.

When the Cavs drafted LeBron in 2003, they were among the worst organizations in pro sports. They had Boozer, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and literally nothing else worth building around -- even though Ricky Davis had a pretty high opinion of himself at that point.

Two years later, the Cavs were starting Ira Newble at the two-guard and completely fell apart down the stretch, narrowly missing the playoffs with Brendan Malone, an interim head coach, at the helm because Paul Silas decided that spiting Jeff McInnis was more important than winning a game in which LeBron scored 56 points, and was subsequently fired.

At the same time, Gordon Gund was selling his majority stake in the team to Dan Gilbert, signifying an organizational paradigm shift from old-school to new-school.

Enter Ferry and Mike Brown shortly thereafter. Starting together from essentially scratch, with LeBron their only real asset, the tandem that everyone loves to hate has won 120 regular season games through Tuesday and four playoff series in about two and a half seasons.

Yet everyone expects Ferry to poof a roster rivaling that of the Spurs and Mavericks onto the floor, or his name is mud and we can't blame LeBron for wanting to leave.

Ferry hasn't batted 1.000 with his moves. Far from it. But no GM does. Given the compost heap Ferry inherited, with no huge expiring deals save for Z's, one free agent class of note and one draft in three offseasons, I don't know if the greatest GMs in the game could have done much better with the Cavs.

Ferry hasn't had a lot to work with in his three years running the Cavs roster. He's going to make mistakes, like any GM. But to go from no playoffs to the top of the conference while still enduring underproductive veterans and fallout from the Jim Paxson era, that's as close to a magical transformation as you'll find in the NBA.

No one here is looking to heap undue praise on Ferry, who still has a lot of work to do. But with tens of millions of dollars in expiring deals over the next two offseasons, Ferry has a chance to do the work. It would be nice if he'd get credit for what he has already done.

For crying out loud, LeBron probably has more confidence in Ferry than anyone in the stands or on press row. And he's the one who is supposed to be storming into Ferry's office and telling him to shove it, remember?

Wild Thing states his case

There wasn't a lot of black and white in the Anderson Varejao holdout saga, which has already faded into the back of most fans' minds.

Danny Ferry held all the cards. He held Varejao's rights as a restricted free agent, he reserved the right to match any offer another team would make, and he was dealing with a player who had a very limited market for his services. No other team was coming out of the woodwork to pay him the kind of money he was seeking -- or any money for that matter, since it was common knowledge that the Cavs would match any reasonable offer.

Still, news reports said Varejao was stubbornly hunkered down on a contract demand somewhere in the $9-10 million per year range. Varejao later refuted those published claims, but whatever he was demanding, Ferry wasn't biting, and the standoff continued into the season.

Public favor largely rested with Cavs management during the entire fiasco. Ferry was attempting to avoid another crippling contract by refusing to shell out too much money for a role player -- in this case, a player high on energy but short on skill, a player many fans and media members deemed replaceable.

It was Varejao who was being unreasonable, we said. He was the one listening to his shark agent, the one overestimating his market value, the one who was apparently too proud to admit he made a miscalculation.

Harsh words followed. Varejao accused Ferry of breaching protocol by making a clandestine trip to see Varejao in Brazil before the start of the season. Ferry said he made the trip because he had been stonewalled from communicating with his player. Varejao countered by saying the Cavs didn't deal in good faith, and that he didn't want to play here anymore.

By the time the Bobcats gave Varejao the out he was looking for, signing him to an offer sheet that would finally force the Cavs to match and break the stalemate, it was already December and damage had been done to the season.

The Cavs were plodding along at that point, reeling from the results of a six-game losing streak that coincided with LeBron James in street clothes attempting to nurse a sprained finger back to health. They were below .500 for the first extended period since LeBron's rookie season of 2003-04, when they finished 35-47.

Then, on Dec. 11, LeBron, Varejao and Larry Hughes all returned in a 118-105 win over the Pacers, and the team's fortunes turned upward.

Since the return of Varejao from his extended offseason, the Cavs are 10-6, including a 5-1 record in January. It's not a coincidence or merely the psychological effect of the team being made whole again. Varejao has had a very real impact on the win-loss column for the Cavs since returning, and it's becoming apparent that the next time the two sides visit the contract negotiating table, Varejao will be in the driver's seat.

His basic stat line reads like a very good bench player's should: 8 points, 8.7 rebounds and half a blocked shot in about 28 minutes per game. But that's only the tip of the iceberg.

The real story of Varejao's return with a vengeance is that 48 of his 139 rebounds this season are offensive; that he's shooting 50 percent from the floor and not all of his made shots are tip-ins or putbacks.

Mike Brown is starting to draw plays that call for LeBron to find Varejao cutting to the basket. The man with hands I once believed were the worst in the NBA is actually a more sure-handed receiver for LeBron's fastballs than teammate Drew Gooden, whose hands should be scarred from all the LeBron passes that have smacked off them and out of bounds.

The real story is that Varejao, since returning, has become the most dynamic, well-rounded big man on the roster, capable of rebounding, playing a little defense, and deceptively using an improving offensive game that not a lot of people know about yet.

If you're a Cavs fan, you want the rest of the country's image of Varejao to come from Game 3 of the NBA Finals, when he foolishly tried to force an errant layup with time winding down, instead of passing back out to LeBron. You want all the other teams to believe that the player they should really be worried about is Gooden.

It makes Varejao's job a lot easier when you write him off as a gangly, uncoordinated pup with no real skills. It allows him to mask his growing basketball intelligence, his knowledge of how to plant his feet just so, take a charge in the sternum and fall over so that the refs toot their whistles in spite of the NBA's anti-flopping crackdown.

It allows him to mask his ability to gain position on opposing players in the rebounding trenches, then relentlessly swipe at the ball with a series of deflections aimed at preventing the other would-be rebounders from getting both their hands securely on the ball.

Like the distorted post-impressionist works of Vincent Van Gogh, Varejao's thrashing, flailing and flopping might look like the brushstrokes of a madman to some, or at least the scrawlings of an amateur. But it might actually be genius unrealized in its own time.

Varejao has always had a unique skill set as a basketball player. It's far from perfected, but even as it stands now, it's a skill set that helps the Cavs win ballgames. It's a skill set that was sorely missed by the Cavs for the month-plus that Varejao sat in Brazil.

Varejao is the glue that holds Mike Brown's bench together. With him, it's a serviceable unit. Without him, it's pretty much dead weight, even with the sharpshooting of Daniel Gibson available.

When -- or hopefully before -- Varejao becomes an unrestricted free agent the summer after next, Ferry would be wise to realize what he has in Varejao, and be ready to pay him as such.

While Ferry was right to not overpay this time and load another cumbersome contract onto the Cavs' collective back, Varejao's unrestricted free agency will be a different story. Not only will Varejao demand a huge raise, by that point in time, there might be teams out there willing to give him the money he wants.

If the first month-plus of Varejao's return to the Cavs is any indication, Varejao is developing into a star, someone the Cavs cannot afford to part with in the years leading up to LeBron's own unrestricted free agency, when it will be critical to show him that he can be a long-term title contender in his home state.

Hopefully, the coming year and a half will allow time for Ferry and Varejao to rebuild any bridges that were burned during the recent contract fiasco. Otherwise the Cavs and Cleveland fans might find out the hard way that Varejao isn't as replaceable as we once believed.

Back up to speed

Apologies, but a planned weekend trip followed by an unplanned early-week bout with the flu caused my blog to once again fall dormant for an extended period.

As the straggling virus bodies still swimming around in my head are making it difficult for me to concentrate long enough to pen a coherent full-length column on a single subject, let me just offer up a few thoughts on the most recent newsworthy sports stories:

1. BCS Title Game ... ick

At first I thought Jim Tressel was on to something with this whole "do exactly the opposite of what you did last year against Florida" thing. He opened the floodgates, let Todd Boeckman pass downfield on first down, and used that to set up the run. It looked like a genius move when Chris Wells scampered 65 yards for one of his patented objects-in-mirror-may-be-faster-than-they-appear touchdowns.

Alas, reality soon set in, and when the Bucks had to settle for a field goal and a 10-0 lead instead of a touchdown and a 14-0 lead, I could feel the air starting to leave the sails. The rest of the way, LSU looked composed and confident, while the Buckeyes -- especially Boeckman -- looked like the little team on the big stage.

Ohio State was an athletically overmatched team Monday night. Even if you are Big Ten to the bone and loathe all things SEC, you have to admit that Monday's game pretty much signed, sealed and delivered everything you wanted to disprove about the two conferences.

Monday, it sure as heck looked like the best the Big Ten has to offer couldn't hang with the best the SEC has to offer. You can counter-argue with Michigan over Florida in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, but that appears to be the exception -- not to mention Michigan was trying to send Lloyd Carr out a winner.

The Big Ten teams that made it to BCS games were manhandled. Like the Buckeyes, Illinois didn't deserve to be in their game. It was embarrassing for the entire conference to watch Illinois get smoked by USC in the Rose Bowl.

Monday, it sure as heck looked like the only reason Ohio State made it to the BCS title game was by eating snack food for a non-conference schedule and then beating up on inferior Big Ten competition the rest of the way. Everything you wanted to believe wasn't true was, in fact, as real as the nose on your face.

This year, with its upsets and world-turned-upside-down rankings, was quite possibly the best argument for a playoff system yet. If it prevents Ohio State from being held up as a national title contender when they are certainly not, I'm all for it.

2. GMAC Bowl ... ick-squared

I guess I can't complain. Bowling Green has won five of their last seven bowl appearances, which already gives them a higher winning percentage than Ohio State. But .... losing 63-7. To Tulsa. On the eve of what would prove to be a miserable BCS title game. It's just too much.

The game was supposed to be a match-up of high-powered offenses. Double-40s for a final score wasn't out of the question. Of course, Tulsa had the best offense in the nation this year -- historically great, actually, as they became the first NCAA team ever to post a 5,000-yard passer, two 1,000-yard receivers and a 1,000-yard rusher.

I've watched Mid-American Conference football for seven years. I covered it for one season as a student reporter at BGSU. And there is one prejudice I don't know if I will ever overcome after seeing this debacle.

MAC teams can't play any friggin' defense. Nope. Show me all the stats you want. I'll never believe that there has ever been such a thing as an "elite" MAC defense. In the MAC, defenses are placeholders intended to give the offense time to breathe between possessions.

I have a crackpot theory about this: When a major-conference school recruits Johnny Blue-Chip QB from Anytown High School, U.S.A., they might want to switch Johnny to safety or cornerback. They might want Johnny to start out on special teams and get a better idea of where he fits in.

When a midmajor school like those in the MAC recruit Johnny, the only real trump card they have over the Ohio States and Michigans of the world is they can guarantee Johnny he will stay a QB. Hence, all the top-notch talent that can make a MAC football team competitive is at the choice positions like QB and receiver, because that's how a MAC school gets Big Ten-level talent into their program.

Translation: contending MAC teams score and score some more. But it wasn't happening for BG. Not Sunday, anyway.

3. Chud, Romeo and Mr. Anderson

If reports on Wednesday are true, we know three things about the 2008 Browns: Romeo Crennel will enter the season with a nice extra wad of cash thanks to a new contract extension, offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski will do the same, and Derek Anderson will open training camp as the starting quarterback with a new deal of his own.

Crennel and Anderson made fans chafe at times this season, and there was some grinding of teeth over Chud's reported interview for the Baltimore Ravens' vacant head coaching job last week. But all in all, I'd have to say that stability is a very good thing for the Browns, who haven't seen a lot of it.

Too often, fans get caught up in what moves it will take to get the team to the "next level." Even as this 10-6 season wound down, there were fans convinced that Crennel wasn't the right man for the job, or that Anderson should be ushered out of town to make way for Quinn.

But sometimes, experience is the main ingredient needed to turn a competitive team into a perennial playoff contender. This year was a stepping stone, but the Browns won't be able to build on it if certain key parts of the team are tossed back to square one.

I still think Brady Quinn is the long-term solution at quarterback. I still don't know if Crennel's retirement or Browns football in late January will arrive first. But for an organization that just experienced it's first non-disastrous football season in quite a while, I say stay the course for now. The time for change will make itself evident. There's no need to hasten it.

4. It's about time, Cavs

As I'm writing this post, the Cavs just finished laying a nice, stinky egg in Atlanta. But even with that performance against an admittedly-improved Hawks team on the second night of back-to-backs, you can't argue with six wins in eight games.

This is the Eastern Conference championship club I knew from last year. The starting lineup of Larry Hughes, Sasha Pavlovic, LeBron, Drew Gooden and Z is the best Mike Brown can trot out there, and it's set up a nice bench rotation of Andy Varejao, Devin Brown, Boobie Gibson and Damon Jones.

Danny Ferry did right in playing hardball with Andy and not caving to his contract demands. But with the impact Varejao has had in solidifying the Cavs bench, Ferry had better be prepared to offer him a substantial extension next year. Andy is very important to this team. He is to the bench bunch what LeBron is to the starters. He's the enging that makes them go.

As an aside: Mike Bibby again? If it didn't mess with the Cavs' main rotation, maybe. If it involves Drew Gooden or Boobie, I would respectfully decline. I would also pay for the boot to kick Ferry in the rump if he accepted.

Browns: True or false?

Sometime after the 49ers game, it hit me. An entire season of Browns football had passed, and I don't think I remember a single public mention of owner Randy Lerner.

No wondering about whether he is considering selling the team. No arguing about his involvement or lack of involvement in the day-to-day matters of the team. No hand-wringing over whether Lerner cares more about the Browns, or his English Premiership club, Aston Villa.

From August through December, Lerner had managed to do something he had never done in any previous football season since assuming control of the Browns: stay out of the spotlight. Having a winning, smoothly-run team will allow most owners to do that.

Without talk of a front office overhaul, philosophical changes in direction or a general feeling of impending doom to command the attention of fans and the media, this Browns offseason promises to be like few in recent memory. Football gets to take center stage as the Browns look, for once, like they're building toward something besides the next coaching change.

This whole concept of "adding pieces" is far different from "scrapping the whole thing and starting over," I realize. But once you get used to it, you'll find you're spending far less money on ulcer medication.

With that in mind, let's begin with a little true-and-false about what the Browns need to do this offseason.

1. The Browns need to sign Albert Haynesworth.

FALSE. It would be nice for the Browns to nab Haynesworth, Tennessee's temperamental defensive tackle who is entering unrestricted free agency. But not for what he's likely going to demand.

The buzz about Haynesworth is largely unwarranted. He was playing for a contract this year, yet the only major statistic that took a jump for him was his sack total, which climbed to six from a previous high of three in 2005, which was also his most productive season for tackles with 36 solos and 16 assists. This year, he netted 32 and eight.

At 6'-6" and 320 pounds, Haynesworth is a monster in the defensive middle, to be sure. But at the age of 26, offering him a deal that will take him to the other side of 30 is also a big risk.

2. The Browns need to trade as high as they can to draft a defensive tackle.

TRUE. If you want a franchise-caliber player to act as the centerpiece of a rebuilt defensive line, it's probably better to get one of your own in the draft, rather than buying someone else's used model.

In a fantasy world, the Browns would figure out a way to trade for Miami's first overall selection and take LSU's Glenn Dorsey, possibly the best interior defensive lineman to enter the NFL since Warren Sapp. But daydreams don't make good draft picks.

A more realistic scenario would involve the Browns trading into the middle of the first round for a shot at USC's Sedrick Ellis. At 6'-1" and a shade over 300 pounds, he's a boulder who scouts say has enough speed to get in the backfield and make plays. With Ellis and Shaun Smith up front, the Browns' D-line sure wouldn't hurt for width. And they might be able to apply a pass rush without blitzing, which would be a nice change of pace from the just-completed season.

3. The Browns need to trade Derek Anderson or Brady Quinn, or risk a team-polarizing quarterback controversy.

FALSE. The only way Derek Anderson stays on this team and doesn't remain the starting quarterback is if he plays his way out of the position next year or gets injured. Anderson, while still possessing some very noticeable flaws as a QB, is still the starter for a 10-win team, and deserves to be the unquestioned starter until he proves he shouldn't be, regardless of how good or bad Quinn looks.

There is no controversy brewing unless Anderson makes it so with his play.

4. However, if the Browns decide to move a QB, it should be Anderson.

TRUE. While the decision to trade Charlie Frye and insert Anderson as the starting QB might have been a watershed moment for the new Browns, Quinn is still the longterm future of the QB position in Cleveland.

As Kellen Winslow alluded to following the win over the 49ers, you don't trade away a first- and second-round pick to move up and draft a guy whose future is longterm clipboard duty. If the Browns trade Quinn, there is virtually no chance they would recoup the value of the picks they surrendered to draft him.

Anderson is the hot commodity right now. He would likely yield more than Quinn at this point, though it's still safe to bet that Quinn has a higher performance ceiling than Anderson. While the Browns are under no pressure to trade Anderson, it appears, given the choice, they should listen to offers for him and guard Quinn as their future starting QB.

5. Todd Grantham is a bum and should be fired.

FALSE. It's amazing what a year can do to a guy's reputation. Last January, Grantham had come within a whisker of taking over Michigan State's football program, and was considered the fast-rising assistant coach who would inevitably take over once Romeo Crennel got himself fired.

This January, Grantham is coming off a season in which the Browns defense was among the league's worst, and the public's perception of Grantham has gone from "defensive mastermind" to "village idiot."

Both assumptions are wrong.

Last season, Grantham benefitted from the emergence of Kamerion Wimbley, D'Qwell Jackson and Leigh Bodden as the Browns defense played well enough to create the illusion that defense would be the team's calling card in the coming years.

This year, Ted Washington ran out of gas, Orpehus Roye officially became old, and the defensive line was woefully thin for most of the year. It created a domino effect as Wimbley was frequently double-teamed and neutralized, no pass rush was evident from the opposite side, and the Browns' linebackers and secondary were frequently forced to play deep coverages to try and give the huffing, puffing pass rushers a chance to get to the quarterback.

Translation: Grantham's playcalling isn't the primary culprit for the Browns' defensive struggles. It's a defense that's too old and too thin at some key positions. The Browns need to correct the personnel issues before making a judgment on Grantham.

6. The Browns need to shore up their receiver corps.

TRUE. Winslow and Braylon Edwards are studs, but the receiver corps is dangerously thin behind them.

Joe Jurevicius has said he will return for at least one more year, but already well into his 30s, you can't count on J.J. for consistent production much longer. Beyond Jurevicius is Josh Cribbs, whose primary responsibility is to the special teams unit, and Tim Carter, who will never be mistaken for Cris Carter.

The Browns need to dip their toes into the free agent market here, or spend a middle-round pick on a receiver -- or maybe two. It might not look it now, but in a year, the Browns' receivers lineup could be Winslow, Edwards and a big load of ???

7. Re-signing Jamal Lewis is the most important item on the Browns' offseason to-do list.

TRUE. In one season, Lewis proved that he fits here and still has gas left in the tank. There are no other options out there that fit the Browns as well as Lewis does, and that might be true for both parties.

Trading up to draft Darren McFadden is pure fantasy, Chargers free agent Michael Turner is a career backup from a warm-weather team, and the rest of the top free agent running backs include Dallas' Marion Barber (not going anywhere) and Julius Jones (always hurt), and Oakland's Justin Fargas (do you really want to sign anyone from Oakland's offense at this point?)

Without Lewis, Cleveland's offense takes a big step backward next year. The Browns should try to squeeze every last ounce of football out of Lewis that they can, before his body wears down for good.

End of the road

Jim Sorgi has been referred to as the Maytag Repairman of NFL quarterbacks. As the backup to Canton-bound Peyton Manning, his uniform almost never poses any stain-treatment challenges for the Colts' equipment managers.

Sunday night, one of the league least-used backup QBs looked the part.

Despite playing all but the first two series of the game, Sorgi still finished with just 68 yards passing, a distant second to Peyton Manning's 95 in a relative sliver of action.

Sorgi plus a heavy helping of other Indianapolis backups playing against a highly-motivated Titans squad equaled an ugly 16-10 Titans win and the start of the offseason for the Browns.

Could you really have expected anything more from the Colts, who have been locked into the AFC's second seed for weeks and still finished with a stellar 13-3 record?

Sorgi did his job, and his job wasn't to win the game, or even look good. It was to allow Manning to walk off the field at the end of the game with his arms, legs and head intact and ready to go for the divisional playoff round. That equaled a Colts win on this night.

The Titans, meanwhile, have the anti-Sorgi on their bench. Tennessee's fortunes actually received a boost when scatter-armed starting QB Vince Young left the game in the third quarter with a quadriceps injury, ushering in Kerry Collins, who has led a team to a Super Bowl in his career.

Collins, a superior passer to Young (which isn't saying much), was good enough to eke out a pair of field-goal drives that turned out to be the margin of victory.

For the Browns, the disappointment is bitter in the short term, but for a team that was picked as arguably the NFL's worst at the start of the season, to win 10 games and be in a position to clinch a playoff berth in the season's final weeks has to be viewed as a major step in the right direction, even if they couldn't seal the deal.

Unlike the 2002 team, the last Browns squad that was close to this good, there is little chance that management will give seven starters the axe this offseason. In other words, it appears this season can be a stepping stone to bigger and better things for a team that has a lot of youth at key positions on both sides of the ball.

There will be plenty of time to debate the future moves of the team, the fate of Derek Anderson, Brady Quinn and Jamal Lewis. For now, the sting of a near miss needs to subside, and we need to take in the whole of what has transpired over the past four months.

The Browns are a work in progress, like every other year. But at least this year, "progress" is the operative term.

The Master List: January 2008

I figured I'd get a head start on the new year by updating a list I haven't updated in a while: The Master List of the 20 most valuable players in Cleveland sports.

To refresh, I rank each player based on three main areas:

What does the player mean to his organization?
Is this the type of player the team thinks they can build around? Does he help them win games? Does he increase the legitimacy of the organization? How much would losing this player hurt his team?

What does the player mean to the fans and city?
How much does having this player boost Cleveland's collective morale? Is he a fan favorite?

What is the player's marketability?
Does the player get the name of himself, his team and the city out in the regional or national spotlight? More importantly, does he do it in a positive way (call this the Albert Belle rule).

I last updated this list in August '06. Previous rankings are listed in parenthesis.

1. LeBron James (1)
Yankee hats aside, he's still the first true superstar to wear a Cleveland uniform since Jim Brown. Rooting for the Iranian national soccer team wouldn't change that.

2. Grady Sizemore (2)
His stats fell off in '07, but he still remains a huge fan favorite, and is an exciting defensive centerfielder who now has a Gold Glove to his credit.

3. C.C. Sabathia (12)
He's the first Tribe pitcher since Gaylord Perry to win the Cy Young Award, but in reality, he might be the best Tribe starting pitcher since the heyday of Bob Lemon and Early Wynn in the mid-'50s. Too bad it took until the eve of free agency for C.C. to finally realize that potential.

4. Derek Anderson (NR)
This is what I call an arrival. Four and a half months ago, Anderson was antimatter. Now, he is not-so-arguably the biggest reason for the Browns' turnaround and is lauded as one of the rising quarterback stars in the NFL. Unfortunately, if the Browns miss the playoffs, everyone will remember his four-pick performance against Cincinnati and not what he did in the Browns' nine wins to date.

5. Joe Thomas (NR)
It's been a while since a Browns rookie has made this kind of impact, let alone a rookie offensive lineman. In one season, Thomas has established himself as an elite left tackle, helped solidify a previously-terrible Browns offensive line, was named a Pro Bowl first alternate, and has even caused some cash registers to ring with sales of his No. 73 jersey.

6. Fausto Carmona (NR)
Like Anderson, Carmona stormed onto the scene following a colossal failure. Carmona rebounded from his 10-loss 2006 to post 19 wins in '07 and finish fourth in Cy Young balloting. The 1-2 ace punch he provides along with C.C. is what sets the Indians apart from every other American League team save for Boston.

7. Braylon Edwards (16)
He has largely eliminated the dropped passes that have plagued him since entering the NFL, and has become one of the NFL's most exciting playmakers. In earning his first Pro Bowl invite, Edwards has become the player GM Phil Savage envisioned when he selected him third overall in 2005.

8. Victor Martinez (6)
His drop has little to do with his own performance and more to do with what those above him have accomplished. Martinez is still one of the game's best offensive catchers and was the Indians' go-to guy in clutch situations for most of the '07 season. A highly-underrated aspect of Martinez's skill set is his ability to quarterback a pitching staff. Pitchers seem to quickly gain confidence in Martinez's ability to handle a game.

9. Travis Hafner (3)
After holding strong in the third spot for the first two sets of Master List rankings, Hafner takes a hard fall after a statistically-lackluster '07. But he's still the only true power hitter in the Indians' lineup and he is thoroughly marketable with a nickname like "Pronk," so he stays in the top 10.

10. Jamal Lewis (NR)
Even though the Ravens didn't want him back, having Lewis chewing up yards for the Browns late in games still feels like we're stealing a bit of Baltimore's thunder -- especially as current Ravens running back Willis McGahee continues to not impress. Lewis might not be a long-term solution as a feature back, but he might be more than a one-year reclamation project. He's easily the best power back we've seen around these parts since Kevin Mack.

11. Kellen Winslow (NR)
Since returning to health last year, Winslow has become a pass-catching machine and one of the league's elite tight ends. The motorcycle crash did permanent damage to his knee, so we'll likely never see a 100-percent healthy Winslow. But as he famously once said, "My 90 percent is still better than any other tight end out there." He's just about proving himself right. Only Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates are in Winslow's class. If Winslow can have Gonzalez's longevity, he'll follow Kellen Sr. to Canton.

12. Zydrunas Ilgauskas (8)
With as many bricks as the Cavs chuck at the hoop, how can a 7'-3" guy not be valuable? He cleans the offensive glass, flashes to the top of the key on defense despite his obvious speed disadvantage, and all he asks in return is to be fed the ball on a few pick-and-fades so he can get his 10-15 points per night. He's not a star player, but he'll always be a key ingredient on a winning Cavs team.

13. Eric Steinbach (NR)
Like Joe Thomas, his next-door neighbor in the Sunday trenches, Steinbach isn't an athletic specimen. He's kind of slow, and allegedly wears arm and leg braces to give opponents the illusion that he's more banged-up than he actually is. But when it comes to blocking technique, you won't find many better in the game than Steinbach. To know that he and Thomas might comprise the left side of the Browns line for the next seven-to-10 years is downright heartwarming.

14. Daniel Gibson (NR)
He's not really a starting point guard. He is a bit too small to adequately cover most starting guards in the NBA. But when LeBron feeds the man they call "Boobie" the ball, and he squares to shoot that hair-trigger three, you can feel pretty confident it's going in. More so than, say, Sasha Pavlovic.

15. Rafael Betancourt (NR)
Where, oh where, would the Indians bullpen have been without the services of Everyday Raffy? Joe Borowski ducked and dodged his way to 45 saves, but only because Betancourt and the set-up boys consistently got leads to the ninth inning.

16. Josh Cribbs (NR)
He's one of the best return men in football, which is extremely important when playing the field position game. He also tends to put himself right in the middle of the fray to make or assist tackles on kick coverages. But to move up this list, Cribbs is going to have to make the jump from special teams legend to difference-maker on offense.

17. Phil Dawson (11)
OK, gripe about his leg strength. But Dawson has two game-winning field goals to his credit this year, and would have had a third if not for a last-nanosecond timeout in Oakland. I might also add that he deserves a lobster dinner for the two field goals he kicked against Buffalo in a blizzard.

18. Asdrubal Cabrera (NR)
It remains to be seen whether he will become a longterm member of the Tribe infield, but during the '07 push to the playoffs, he combined pesky hitting with fantastic defense to become a player worth bookmarking.

19. Drew Gooden (13)
His jumper is money from the baseline, and he's a good enough rebounder and defender when he puts his mind to it. But that's the rub, as it always has been with Gooden. He's easily the Cavs' most athletic big man, but inconsistency seems to be part of his genetic makeup.

20. Jhonny Peralta (NR)
Amazing what a little corrective vision surgery can do. After a dismal '06 both in the field and at the plate, it was discovered that Peralta had stopped wearing his contact lenses because they were uncomfortable. After the surgery, Peralta regain his '05 form at the plate and once again became solid, if less-than-spectacular, playing shortstop, baseball's most demanding defensive position.

Off the list: Reuben Droughns, Ted Washington, Charlie Frye, LeCharles Bentley, Larry Hughes, Kamerion Wimbley, Leigh Bodden, Anderson Varejao, Willie McGinest, Shin-Soo Choo, Shannon Brown

Knocking on the door: Brady Quinn, Eric Wright, D'Qwell Jackson, Casey Blake, Ryan Garko

Extreme Makeover: Holiday Edition

All I wanted for Christmas was a shakeup of the Cavaliers' roster. Danny Ferry, it's time to play Santa.

Stability is good, complacency is not good. Right now, the complacency has outweighed the stability factor, individual discontent has outweighed the greater good.

Changes need to be made, or the Cavs will be lucky to win 40 games.

If I were in Ferry's shoes, I'd be in a mood for "Extreme Makeover: Holiday Edition." The longer this malaise extends, the less driven LeBron James is going to be to compete. And we all know LeBron is not always the most motivated player in the NBA, especially when he thinks he's basically playing one-on-five.

So it's time to jolt this roster awake. Here are three trades that could make it happen. They're realistic from a money standpoint, and not totally outlandish from a player-exchange standpoint. All three trades worked in ESPN's NBA Trade Machine:

1. Larry Hughes and Shannon Brown to the Wizards for Antonio Daniels, Darius Songaila and Andray Blatche.

Daniels and Songaila are probably both on the downhill sides of their careers, and both have multiple years remaining on their contracts, but to rid the Cavs of Larry Hughes' cumbersome deal, you do what you have to do.

The Wizards are probably one of the few teams that would be attracted to Hughes. The former Wizard had his greatest success playing in Eddie Jordan's uptempo offense, and could add another scorer to compliment Washington's Big Three of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison. Playing alongside outside shooters like Arenas and Butler would open up more lanes to the basket for Hughes, a factor missing in Cleveland which has contributed greatly to Hughes' failure as a Cav.

Blatche is a big man whom Ferry was interested in acquiring last summer as a restricted free agent. He has seen his role increase in Washington with the possible career-ending heart problems of Etan Thomas, so it's questionable whether the Wizards would want to give him up. But it's likely Ferry would want at least one player with upside in exchange for Hughes.

2. Drew Gooden, Daniel Gibson, Ira Newble and Cedric Simmons to the 76ers for Andre Miller, Kyle Korver and Herbert Hill.

A tough trade to justify. But with Miller and Korver, I envision an entirely new starting backcourt for the Cavs. We know Miller, while not an elite point guard, would still be far better than anyone currently on the Cavs roster. Any point guard who can enable LeBron to be something besides the primary ball-handler and offense-initiator is all right in my book.

Korver is a bit more of a stretch as a starting two-guard. He's lanky, slow afoot and the only real attribute he brings is a deadly outside shot. But isn't that what the Cavs truly need to keep defenses from collapsing on LeBron?

You can argue that Korver would be a sieve on defense. Probably true, but how exactly does that differ from the Cavs' current roster of shooting guards? If you're going to have a sieve, at least have a sieve who can consistently stretch defenses with his shooting.

On the flip side, losing Gooden would obviously hurt. But his contract is movable and Gooden is one of the few pieces the Cavs have that could potentially entice the Sixers to give up both Miller and Korver. You have to give up something to get something.

Update 12/29: So much for Kyle Korver.

3. Damon Jones to the Rockets for Kirk Snyder and Steve Francis.

Jones wants out of Cleveland, and has for a while. Apparently, he's even turned his trade quest into a musical. Sending Jones to his hometown Rockets might finally douse the fire of discontent that burns within the World's Greatest Shooter.

Essentially, this is a trade of spare parts. Francis has become utterly irrelevant as a NBA player over the past few years, he's averaging about 5.5 points this year for Houston. Snyder is a 24-year-old project player. Both Francis and Snyder have expiring contracts. Jones' deal will become an expiring contract next season.

Yes, Francis can be an even worse malcontent than Jones, and when it comes to selfish play, he's downright Marburian. But the Cavs would only have to deal with him for the balance of the season. it can't be any worse than enduring Jeff McInnis, can it?

The result:

Those three trades would leave the Cavs with a roster short on decent individual defenders but hopefully longer on scoring. If Mike Brown can't get his guys to play tough defense most nights, the team at least has to win somehow.

In the short term, maybe Brown has to bend his coaching toward what his team wants to do instead of constantly butting heads with his players over their lack of defensive intensity as the losses mount. If Brown can't bring himself to coach an offense-minded roster to play offense, maybe he's not the right man for the job.

In the long term, I'd rather see Brown try to teach a team of scorers how to play defense than take an endless stream of Ira Newbles and Larry Hugheses and try to turn them into good scorers. In basketball, defense is about footwork and energy; it can be taught. Offense is more about innate talent. Outside of improving on shooting form, a bad scorer really can't be taught to become a good scorer at the NBA level.

A score-first roster would better take advantage of LeBron's passing skills, which would hopefully make The King feel less like he's banging his head against a wall every time he pushes the ball up the court.

The bottom line: The Cavs need a makeover, and it appears that Ferry and Brown have been trying to pound square pegs into round holes for too long now. This team isn't the Spurs or the Pistons and probably never will be. Maybe it's time to stop fighting that fact and go with the flow.

Clinch time? Nope, choke time

The Browns had a chance Sunday. They had a chance, and they blew it. End of story.

The Browns choked the same way the Indians choked when they had a chance to close out the ALCS. They were in a position to advance, they came out tight, made panicky mistakes and lost. That's it. Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

I can't see the Browns going to the playoffs now. I know there's all that fine print about how the Browns can make it in with a Tennessee loss to the Colts next week. But when you shoot yourself in the foot as gruesomely as the Browns did Sunday, the fates always seem to align against you.

If the hand of fate lands where I think it's going to land, the Titans are beating the Colts next Sunday. The Colts, locked into the AFC's second seed, have no need to play their starters for more than a series or two. Whether they finish 14-2 or 13-3 is of little consequence to the defending Super Bowl champs. They sure as heck have no vested interest in helping the Browns.

It appears Cleveland will have to be satisfied with a 10-6 or 9-7 finish and a near miss of the playoffs. But, hey, it's a five- or six-game improvement over last year, right? Right?

Somehow, when you get this close and fail, the satisfaction of vastly exceeding everyone's wildest expectations doesn't wash the bitter taste out of your mouth.

Sunday's 19-14 loss to the undermanned and supposedly-outclassed Bengals is a loss with a lot of potential fallout and long-reaching ramifications.

The only winner on the Cleveland sideline was Brady Quinn. Over the span of three hours, he went from surefire benchwarmer to back in the starting quarterback fray for 2008. Derek Anderson gave Quinn the opening as he took a hatchet to the reputation he spent all season crafting as one of the league's rising QB stars.

Anderson was, quite simply, embarrassing. On the biggest stage of his career, his legs turned to Jell-O. And when Anderson goes weak in the knees, we all know what's going to happen next: he's going to cave to his QB hammerhead instincts and throw the ball as hard as he can, defensive coverage be damned.

Anderson was certainly helped by a couple of inexcusable drops off the normally-sure hands of Lawrence Vickers and Joe Jurevicius. But that was only a small fraction of Anderson's woes. Most of them were self-inflicted with disastrous results.

All four of his interceptions were of the "What in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was he THINKING throwing that?" variety. Even the deflected interception that short-circuited the drive to start the third quarter was thrown too low to a screened-off Kellen Winslow, who was being swarmed by black jerseys.

All told, Anderson's wild arm led directly to 13 Bengal points at the end of the first half and killed two would-have-been scoring drives in the second half.

It's a long-way-around way of saying that Anderson lost the game. Singlehandedly. Yes, that's harsh. But it's also true. Take Anderson out of the equation, and the Browns played a solid game all around. The defense didn't allow the Bengals into the end zone on the occasions when an Anderson pick didn't pin them against their own goal line.

The offensive stat lines were peppered with nice individual performances in spite of Anderson's miscues: Braylon Edwards, eight receptions for 52 yards and two touchdowns to pass Gary Collins for a new Browns single-season record; Kellen Winslow, seven catches for 73 yards; Jamal Lewis, 21 rushes for 92 yards.

The turnover battle was even closer than you might have realized as the Bengals nudged the Browns 4-3. Bengals QB Carson Palmer was picked twice and running back Kenny Watson was stripped of the ball in a critical late-game turnover that gave the Browns a chance to win.

But when your starting quarterback sabotages you with four interceptions, all on terrible throws and all with dire consequences, it's just too much to overcome.

Perhaps not even Anderson yet realizes how much damage he did on Sunday. Not only did he deliver the Browns' playoff hopes a potentially-fatal blow, not only did he raise an enormous red flag concerning his ability to perform competently -- let alone win -- in a playoff environment, he might have just shrunk the market greatly for his services in 2008, should the Browns choose not to retain him.

Unless Anderson can rebound in a big way and the Browns can still find a way into the playoffs, Anderson will arrive in restricted free agency as a choker, the saboteur who ruined the Browns' 2007 playoff run. Atlanta, Miami and any other team in the market for an upgrade at quarterback is going to almost certainly think twice about making a play for Anderson.

If the Browns slap the franchise tag on Anderson, they would be doing it with an eye toward keeping him, because no team's GM in his right mind would sacrifice a first- and third-round draft pick to acquire a QB who makes the kinds of rookie mistakes a team would have to endure if they had just drafted a kid out of college and played him as an NFL frosh.

For Anderson and the Browns, the prevailing attitude is probably to suck it up and get ready for San Francisco next week. Even if they're no longer in the driver's seat, the Browns are still alive in the race for the final AFC wild card slot.

But this loss to Cincinnati might not go away as easily as that, and it goes beyond the haunting thoughts of what might have been, should the Browns find themselves cleaning out their lockers a week from Monday.

For a team that needed stability at the QB position, they now have a rapidly-brewing controversy. For a QB who needed to assert himself as a winner, he now faces a murky future as a franchise building block. For a fan base that has waited so long for playoff football, it might be time to start counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report.

Clinch time?

This is the game I circled when it became apparent that the Browns were going to make a serious playoff push.

Week 16, Bengals, at Cincinnati.

It turns out, this game goes even deeper than I imagined it would.

If the Browns win, they clinch their first playoff berth in five years, and keep alive their flickering hopes for their first division title in 18 years.

If they lose, they open a Pandora's box of nasty possibilities.

A Browns loss coupled with a Tennessee Titans win over the Jets would push the Titans back into the driver's seat for the final playoff spot. If the Titans beat the Colts the following week -- a distinct possibility since the second-seeded Colts would likely rest their starters for much of the game -- the Titans would win the final playoff spot regardless of the outcome of the Browns-49ers game.

In that scenario, the Browns and Titans would finish with identical conference records of 7-5, and the Browns would lose on the third tiebreak -- record versus common opponents. The Titans would hold a 4-1 record in games against the Texans, Raiders, Bengals and Jets. The Browns would hold a 3-2 record against the same teams.

The Browns can avoid it all by simply taking care of business against the Bengals this afternoon. But this is a dangerous game because it's a division game against a intrastate rival that is convinced that their Week 2 loss to the Browns propelled the teams in opposite directions.

The Bengals seem to have reverted back to the "Bungles" teams that soiled the NFL's good name for the all of the 1990s and the first half of this decade. But this is a team that is better than their 5-9 record would indicate.

Yes, this is a team that lost to the woeful 49ers eight days ago. But the Bengals also pounded the Titans 35-6 in late November. Their defense might be among the league's worst, but then again, so is the Browns'.

If anything, this game could be like shadow-fighting for the Browns. Two teams with questionable defenses relying on their high-powered offenses to score their way to a win.

Two things probably give the Browns the upper hand: They have superior special teams, particularly when it comes to punting and kick returning, so they can play the field position game better than that Bengals likely can. The Bengals will also be without the services of perennial Browns killer Rudi Johnson according to news reports, which will probably force the Bengals to the air more than they'd like.

Leigh Bodden, Eric Wright and the rest of the Browns' cornerbacks had better get ready. Cleveland's chances in this game might rest on their collective ability to contain high-octane receivers Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh. Without the services of Rudi Johnson, QB Carson Palmer will probably go to the air early and often.

And Derek Anderson, if your team falls behind early, please resist the temptation to force passes into triple coverage 40 yards downfield. If you let this Cincinnati defense pick you off three or four times, it will be a repeat of the Cardinals game all over again.

Remember, with Kellen Winslow lurking close to the line of scrimmage, it's always the right time for dump-off time.

On paper, the playoff-contending Browns should have no problem polishing off a Bengals team that lacks Rudi Johnson. But this is the AFC North, where all four teams have a history of really not liking each other. The Bengals would relish the opportunity to play spoiler for the Browns' playoff hopes, as the Browns did to the Bengals on the last week of the 2003 season. They will be motivated, make no mistake about it.

If the Browns are as good as advertised, it shouldn't make a difference, and they should be able to head back to the other end of the state with a playoff berth in tow. But if they're not, the Titans will have the opening they've been looking for, and Week 17 could be a drag race to the finish line, with the Browns sitting in the passenger seat.

The King and his coach

Well into his third season with the Cavaliers, we figure we know a good amount about Mike Brown as a basketball coach.

He preaches defense above all else. He's a basketball bookworm well-versed in the X's and O's of the sport, a must for any successful coach. He realizes that the Cavs are a LeBrocracy and willingly takes a backset, adjusting his leadership style and temperament the best he can to suit his superstar.

Last year, Brown pushed enough right buttons to get a Cavs team with a less-than-elite roster to play elite defense for two months, enough to knock off the Pistons and reach the franchise's first-ever NBA Finals.

All in all, it would seem Mike Brown has most of the tools for success as an NBA coach. So as the 2007-08 Cavs season quickly devolves into a train wreck, we have to ask, "What gives?"

Everything Brown taught his players to believe in last year was lost over the summer. The Cavs departed Game 4 of the Finals as a scrappy bunch that played over their heads on defense. They arrived in training camp minus three major contributors -- two to contract holdouts and one to knee surgery -- but that doesn't offer much of an excuse for the remaining players who, outside of LeBron, showed that Brown's defensive principles of the previous spring had a retention rate of about two percent.

The Cavs are now one of the worst defensive teams in the league, serving up 105 points to the Nets and 108 to the Knicks, who are among the most stone-cold-awful offensive teams in the NBA.

it would be easy to chalk it all up to a terrible roster assembled by Danny Ferry. But it isn't quite that simple.

Yes, the Cavs have major flaws and an obvious talent deficiency compared to the NBA's true elite. That's an issue that goes back to the Jim Paxson regime and something I've addressed before. But the reason why this team plays with such mind-blowing inconsistency goes deeper than raw talent or lack thereof.

There is an apparent rift between Brown and his players, and it appears to be the sum of a coach with questionable teaching and motivational techniques pitted against a roster that follows the lead of their sometimes-moody, ego-driven superstar leader.

Brown is not a fool. Let's get that out of the way right now. He knows basketball, and he probably knows more about offense than anyone wants to credit him for. But there has been a long-standing question of if he can take his extensive basketball knowledge and make it palatable for his players.

Mike Brown is like Stephen Hawking lecturing you on the inner workings of quantum physics until your brain melts. That's not what a coach is supposed to do. A coach is supposed to take PhD-level basketball concepts and explain them in a short, sweet way that your garden-variety NBA jock can take and implement on the hardwood.

The best-laid plans do no good if all they do is bore the people who will carry out those plans to tears, or worse yet, fly straight over their heads in a flurry of five-dollar words and industry jargon.

The troubling this is, Brown has the right idea, but he might be presenting it in an unproductive way. Defense wins championships, and defense is the reason the Cavs made it to the championship round last spring. But Brown might have made a defense-first philosophy so unappealing to his players that they want to stick cotton in their ears to drown their coach out and run the floor.

Now, switch over to LeBron. He carries a lot of weight in the Cavs organization. I mean, a LOT. More weight than one player should probably carry in a healthy organization. But, by being leaps-and-bounds the best player in the until-recently-forgettable history of the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron is the strongest voice in the locker room, on the court and in the front office.

If he gets frustrated with his coach, the whole roster gets frustrated with their coach. If he doesn't see eye-to-eye with Brown, nobody in uniform sees eye-to-eye with Brown.

LeBron is quite possibly the most talented offensive player in the game right now. Obviously, he wants a system that plays to his strengths: Passing, driving and court vision. Brown has implemented that kind of system ... sort of. He erected a basic template that calls for LeBron to get the ball up top, utilize screens, suck the defense in and have the option to either kick the ball out or power to the hoop for a layup, dunk or foul.

But it's all predicated on expending loads of energy getting defensive stops, something LeBron doesn't always deem necessary. LeBron doesn't think every uptempo opportunity should have to stem from the transition game. Obviously, a roster of offense-minded players like Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden, Daniel Gibson and Zydrunas Ilgauskas would be inclined to agree with their court leader.

LeBron wants a team that is as comfortable winning in the 110s as in the 80s, and might actually prefer to win on the plus side of the century mark. Brown wants no part of that; triple-digit scores make him cringe because they reflect a second-rate defensive effort. His ideal final score is something like 84-78, with the opposing team shooting 29 percent from the floor.

Almost two and a half years into Brown's tenure, and the rift never totally disappears. Temporary truces have been called, as one was last spring, but only to benefit the greater good of a playoff run.

The Cavs are now back to their default setting of offense-minded roster led by an offense-minded superstar butting heads with a defense-minded coach. The Cavs, under this current setup, will probably never truly embrace defense as their calling card, as so many great teams have in the past. And Brown will never accept a cold-weather version of the Phoenix Suns sprinting up and down the floor on his watch.

So the standoff continues. At some point, the Cavs might lose enough games that one side or the other will crack.

The end of an era

I'm not usually one to talk about my alma mater around here. When you're from a smaller school like Bowling Green, your feelings toward your alma mater's sports teams tend to become like your feelings toward your family: strong, and intensely private, lest you get ridiculed for it.

No one, outside of other BG alums, need know that I sometimes bleed brown and orange for a team other than the Cleveland Browns. But when I found out (courtesy of Joel Hammond) that big changes might be coming to BG, I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore.

Anderson Arena, the home of BGSU basketball since 1960, is facing the beginning of its end. Construction will reportedly begin in 2010 on a new convocation center on the east side of campus, part of a $150 million campus improvement project mean to coincide with the university's centennial celebration.

Progress is progress, I guess, but as some who covered BG men's basketball for two years and women's basketball for one year, I'm finding it hard to accept the fact that the old steel-and-brick barn at the center of campus is approaching its last chapter.

Anderson Arena is what sets BG basketball apart from other Mid-American Conference programs. The Ohio University Bobcats play in an aging-but-spacious convocation center (called, quite creatively, the Convocation Center). Kent State and Toledo, BG's two most bitter rivals at the time I attended, play in bland bleacher-filled boxes that reek of ambiguity. Standing in the lobbies of Toledo's Savage Hall or Kent's MAC Center, I could clear the crowd noise out of my head and not really know if I was in a classroom building, a rec center, an administrative building or what.

The Bowling Green Falcons, they have a homecourt advantage all their own.

Anderson Arena has been Northwest Ohio's answer to Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium and any other old, dark house of the masses that has since been consigned to history in favor of the bigger and, supposedly, the better. It is small, cramped and musty in places. Layers of flaking paint have turned some of the handrails and bleachers into a mosaic of orange, black, and in places, green.

The upstairs concourses are dark linoleum and smell of pizza and popcorn during games. The press box is cramped and hidden way up top, almost in the rafters.

The doors to the coaches' offices are wooden, the restrooms are outfitted in pale gree tile and the postgame press conferences are held in a classroom with barely enough room to fit more than one camera crew looking for a soundbite from the coaches before they'd pack up and leave those of us in the print media to continue the interview.

So many games have been dissected and analyzed in that room. It's the place where always-opinionated former BG coach Dan Dakich got on his soapbox in his weekly media chats, where Akron coach Dan Hipsher lost his temper, probably on more than one occasion, where Miami Ohio coach Charlie Coles could always be counted on for a one-liner with enough zing to get everyone laughing.

If those were the only reasons to lament the end of Anderson Arena as a basketball house, that would be enough. But none of those reasons are the real reason I love Anderson Arena.

I love the place because 5,000 people can sound like 20,000 when the place is rocking and BG basketball is the talk of the campus. At Anderson Arena, the student section is right on top of the court, adding to the noise and intimidation factor for opposing teams. It's a feature no longer present in today's security-minded arenas.

In November 2001, BG upset Michigan at Anderson Arena, 65-59, in one of the biggest regular-season games in school history. As the final seconds ticked down, the noise in the old house grew to jet-engine levels. As the clock hit zero, the entire student section stormed the court. The highlights made it onto SportsCenter.

I have no doubt in my mind that the crowd helped lift BG to a win that night, and to another win several weeks later over UNC-Wilmington, 84-83 in overtime. The fans stormed the court after that one, too.

Those are the memories I took with me as I left BG. Walking out of a broiling-hot arena after a game, heading across campus to the journalism building on a bitter-cold night, my game notes in my bag, knowing that I was carrying the story that would be the talk of the campus the next day.

I'm sure the new convocation center will be quite a sight when it opens. I'm sure it will have all the latest amenities to aid student-athletes, enhance the game-day experience for fans, and with any luck, give recruiting a boost.

But with the move, the BG basketball program is going to lose a great piece of what makes it the BG basketball program. In a sanitized-for-your-protection convocation center, high on comfort and low on personality, like scores of other college convocation centers around America, 5,000 fans will sound like just that -- 5,000 fans.

There will be no place for the sound to go but up and away, dissipating echoes joining the noise from seasons past at Anderson Arena. At that point, those of us who follow BG basketball might realize just how much we've lost.

(Photo credit: Jordan Flower, BG News)

Don't Kidd yourself just yet

A story appeared on Yahoo! sports Wednesday noting that Jason Kidd and LeBron James had reportedly sent text messages to each other about how great it would be to hook up together in Cleveland.

In Cleveland, where the Cavs have been mired in a colossal slump without the services of LeBron due to a finger sprain, that is a headline surpassed only by "PEARL HARBOR BOMBED."

In a matter of minutes, the rumor mill turned into a buzzing bees' nest and the mantra of Cavs fans everywhere became, "Danny Ferry, get it done NOW!"

Imagine the starting lineup the Cavs would be able to trot out each night:

PG: Jason Kidd
SG: Some Guy
SF: LeBron James
PF: Some Guy
C: Some Guy

Wouldn't that be fantastic?

You bet it would. Kidd is just what the doctor ordered for the Cavs at both ends of the floor. A pass-first point guard with the size to play physical and body up on bigger defenders. He's also an elite defender and rebounder -- maybe the best rebounding guard in the league.

Trades involving players like Jason Kidd just don't happen that often. They're too valuable to their teams, and those teams have to make sure they get richly-compensated if they trade the player.

Which is why, if I was a betting man, I'd say any Cavs fan who is pinning all hope for a championship on Ferry's ability to trade for Kidd is set up for more disappointment and bitterness than necessary. Already, Kidd is trying to stomp out the brush fires caused by media speculation.

It's probably not going to happen. Kidd's $19 million salary this year and $21 million salary next year are only part of the reason why. Here are a few other reasons:

1. Unless Kidd majorly forces his hand, there is no way Nets GM Rod Thorn will trade him.

Kidd, as with any elite point guard, is the engine who makes his team run. If the Nets deal him, they're basically telling their players, "we're heading into a rebuilding phase." Chances are, that wouldn't go over so well with the team's other two stars, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson. The last time Carter was faced with a rebuilding project in Toronto, he admittedly quit on his team, leading to his eventual trade to New Jersey.

In other words, any way you slice it, trading Kidd would be a public relations disaster for the Nets, both with their fans and their own players. They probably can't afford that several years before moving into a new arena.

2. The Cavs have few players that the Nets need.

Start by putting Drew Gooden on the table at about $6.4 million this year. Gooden would have to be included in any trade for Kidd because the Nets need size and skill in the frontcourt. A woeful rebounding deficiency led to their loss to the Cavs in last year's conference semifinals.

But Gooden would only be a starting point since the money in NBA trades have to match within 15 percent per the collective bargaining agreement. So the Cavs would have to dump several less-desirable bench players like currently-injured Donyell Marshall ($5.5 million), Damon Jones ($4.1 million) or Ira Newble ($3.4 million) on New Jersey, or try to round out the deal with the brittle and also currently-injured Larry Hughes ($12 million).

Chances are, with Carter and Jefferson already in the fold and providing more-than-adequate wing scoring, the Nets wouldn't have much of a need for Hughes. That means in order to dump Hughes in a Kidd trade, a third team would probably have to get involved, opening up a whole new set of negotiations.

Did I mention that if you trade Gooden, you need to find another starting power forward? It's not going to be Anderson Varejao, who is an unknown quantity after a six-month hiatus from NBA basketball.

3. We're worked up into a frenzy over text messages?

Maybe, just maybe, LeBron and Kidd were having some fun with each other. Sure, they'd love to play together, and maybe even with the Cavs, but let's not read into this more than it's worth.

A message like "r u cmg 2 clevld jason" is not a blockbuster deal in the works. It's the grammatically-incorrect bantering of two guys who became friends over the summer. Maybe at some point Kidd and LeBron end up together with the Cavs, but the guys pulling the strings are Thorn and Ferry, not Kidd and LeBron. To believe anything else is to believe unfounded gossip, no matter how much you'd like to believe that star players are really the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes.

It makes for fun conversation around the water cooler. But the percentage of it that's rooted in reality is probably far less than Cavs fans would like to admit.

A slice of humble pie

Maybe Derek Anderson was just off his game in the first quarter of Sunday's 27-21 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Maybe he was playing within himself and just made some bad throws.

I saw something different.

I saw a quarterback who might have started to believe his own hype, a QB who was starting to realize that he is the out-of-nowhere feel-good story of the 2007 NFL season. Fans and media have been gushing over the rags-to-riches story of Derek Anderson, about his rocket arm and pocket poise, since late September, and maybe, just maybe, it was all starting to go to his head.

On the heels of a couple of nifty touchdown passes against Houston, including a missile to Kellen Winslow that managed to elude three Texan defenders, Anderson was becoming a prime candidate to start believing that he could pierce masonry with one of his passes.

You could liken it to a golfer who is so impressed with his ability to drive the ball 270 yards, he forgets that if the ball ends up on the next fairway over or in the cattails of a water hazard, it's still a horrible shot.

There is a fine line between good arrogance and bad arrogance in the spotlighted world of NFL quarterbacks. A quarterback has to believe he can make all his throws, even in the face of criticism. He has to believe in his ability to zip the ball into tight coverage when needed. He can't fear the possibility of an interception when he drops back in the pocket.

But he also has to know when such Herculean displays of strength are needed, and when to let off the gas pedal and play it a little more conservatively. He has to remember that the object of the game is to score touchdowns, not impress everyone with his arm strength.

Sunday, Anderson might have dabbled a little too much in arm vanity. And football, like any sport will do sooner or later, served up a slice of humility to the Browns' blossoming QB.

Tim Carter gets an assist on Anderson's first interception for failing to come back to the ball. But Anderson still carelessly winged the ball wide, to a place where it was easy pickings for Cardinal corner Roderick Hood, who snagged the errant pass and cruised 71 yards for the first score of the game. Even if Carter comes back to the ball, that still was probably an interception.

The second interception was more glaring. Anderson was hit as he threw a deep ball to Braylon Edwards, but the ball was thrown into double coverage with the Browns trailing 14-3 and in desperate need of a touchdown, and in even more desperate need of not falling farther behind.

With underneath throws working, as they have more times than not this year, Anderson opted for the jugular in a situation where a kill wasn't needed. The contact Anderson absorbed as he released the ball turned what would have been a dicey play into another brown leather blimp hanging in the sky for a Cardinal defender to snag. Hood again was the opportunist, returning the pick 26 yards.

After watching four years of ultra-conservative and unimaginative playcalling from the Browns, I'm not ever going to say they should abandon the big play, especially when the team finally possesses a quarterback and receivers capable of big hookups. But there is a time and a place for big gambles, and down 14-3, with a delicate momentum swing in your favor, isn't the time. Certainly not into double coverage.

Two picks, a botched snap that led to another turnover, and his failure to put the ball in the end zone in the fourth quarter all add up to Anderson's worst start-to-finish game since becoming the Browns' starting QB in Week 2.

The magic wand Anderson was able to wave in previous comeback situations wasn't there. Even so, the Browns were still one Winslow toe-plant away from winning the game as time expired, proving that these Anderson-led Browns are capable of absorbing a lot of adversity and still give themselves a shot to win many games.

But three turnovers at the hands of their quarterback was simply too much to overcome. And it should have been. Even if Winslow pulls off the miracle touchdown catch, the Browns had no business winning Sunday because they let mistakes ruin a game in which they otherwise battled the Cardinals to a draw.

For the first time since Oakland blocked a last-second field goal in Week 3, Anderson and his gifted arm weren't enough to rescue the Browns from losing to an inferior team. It's a tough lesson for a QB to learn, but one that is necessary.

You can have the kind of arm that would make Nolan Ryan look like Jamie Moyer, but even that isn't going to be enough to overcome the gray matter between your ears.

That is where Derek Anderson, and his teammates, lost Sunday's game.

Sean Taylor update

The cause of Sean Taylor's murder earlier this week now points to a burglary gone bad.

Four males were arrested Friday, two men and two juveniles, and according to the confessions Miami-Dade County police reportedly received from the quartet, they entered Taylor's house looking for items to steal. When they entered Taylor's bedroom during the early Monday morning incident, Taylor surprised them and one of the intruders shot him.

The Associated Press, via ESPN, reported that the four suspects did not expect Taylor to be at his Miami home during football season, but Taylor had been rehabbing from a knee injury primarily at home for several weeks, leading to the fatal confrontation.

The AP identified the four suspects as: Venjah K. Hunte, 20; Eric Rivera Jr., 17; Jason Scott Mitchell, 17; and Charles Kendrick Lee Wardlow, 18. Charges had not been filed as of Saturday morning, but are expected to be related to murder and burglary.

Mitchell and Wardlow had prior connections to Taylor, according to the Miami Herald via ESPN. Mitchell did chores around Taylor's house. Taylor's sister reportedly dated Wardlow's cousin.

Friday's news took the Taylor story in an entirely new direction. Prior to the arrests of the four suspects, widespread opinion was that someone from Taylor's sometimes-troubled past had targeted him. Arizona Cardinals cornerback Antrel Rolle, a childhood friend of Taylor's, told the AP that a number of acquaintances "had been targeting him for three years now," and that "he lived his life scared every day of his life down in Miami because those people were targeting him."

Taylor, 24, died early Tuesday morning due to massive blood loss when a bullet severed the femoral artery in his leg. His girlfriend and 18-month-old daughter, who were also in the bedroom at the time of the shooting, were not injured.