Why the Cavs can beat Orlando

There is a first time for everything. And here in the city that Charles Barkley loves to hate, Cavaliers fans are definitely breaking new ground.

We might be the first fans of an 8-0 playoff team to reach a meltdown-crisis point before the conference finals even tip off.

Maybe that's stretching it a bit. But there definitely are some fans among us who think the Cavs are a mighty ocean liner steaming toward an iceberg named the Orlando Magic.

The soil is fertile for naysayers who are looking for reasons to be pessimistic. The Cavs so thoroughly dusted the Pistons and Hawks in the first two playoff rounds, it looks like they were hardly challenged. And if you think the Cavs were hardly challenged through their first eight playoff games, it would follow that you would start wringing your hands over what might happen if they were to face a stiff challenge from an opponent capable of defeating them.

The Magic have defeated the Cavs this season. They won in convincing fashion twice in Florida, besting the Cavs 99-88 on Jan. 29 and administering a 116-87 butt-whupping on Apr. 3, Cleveland's worst loss of the season. The lone contest in Cleveland went to the Cavs, 97-93, on St. Patrick's Day, but was a closely-contested game until the end.

While the Cavs have spent nine days cooling their heels -- and maybe gathering some inevitable rust -- between each playoff round, the Magic have been hard at work. They've played 13 playoff games to the Cavs' eight. In the final two games against the Celtics, they rallied from a 3-2 series deficit, won a Game 7 in Boston, and may have grown a playoff spine right before our very eyes.

A number of the matchups would seem to favor Orlando in a series against Cleveland. The Magic play tall on the perimeter with 6'-10" sharpshooters Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis, and 6'-6" Mickael Pietrus. The Cavs play small with 6'-1" Mo Williams and 6'-3" Delonte West starting in the backcourt, and 6'-2" Daniel Gibson coming off the bench. No one in the Cavs' big man corps would seem to be able to match the skill and athleticism of Dwight Howard. Courtney Lee and Rafer Alston are far from an elite starting backcourt, but they are pesky enough to neutralize Williams and West to a great degree.

With all the damning evidence, why bother even tuning in, then? The Cavs' season surely ended the instant Orlando walked off the floor in with a series win in Boston, right?

Before you get set to euthanize and eulogize the Cavs' season before Game 1, let me erase the blackboard of your mind. If you count yourself among the doubting Thomases, let me set the record straight: The Cavs can -- and should -- beat the Magic over the span of seven games. Let me give you some reasons why.

1. Shouldn't it be obvious? LeBron James

If I were to be allowed only one witness to make my case as to why the Cavs should win this series, I wouldn't hesitate in calling No. 23 to the stand.

In last year's playoffs, LeBron tried to save the Cavs' season by getting into a scoring duel with Paul Pierce. The Cavs lost Game 7 in Boston, and the seed was planted for the prime-of-career, league-MVP force that emerged this season.

It's going to be extremely difficult for any team to deny LeBron what he wants. And what he wants right now is a championship. Orlando probably doesn't have the ammo to stop a truly-motivated LeBron over the span of seven games. Howard might be able to bother him at the rim, but that might mean foul trouble, early and often.

Beyond Howard, it's hard to see who is going to hold LeBron in check. Turkoglu doesn't possess the quickness or the girth. Lewis has the height, but also lacks girth. What it probably means is a lot of help defense and double teams on LeBron, and a lot of open looks for the Cavs' shooters.

2. Zydrunas Ilgauskas can open up the paint

Z plays a slow, plodding brand of basketball, brought on by his height, advancing age and multiple pieces of metal in both feet. But if he's swishing his tiptoe 20-foot jumpers, it will look like poetry in motion against Orlando.

If Z keeps making his shots, sooner or later Howard, or Marcin Gortat, or whoever is playing center for the Magic, will have to venture out of the paint to contest Z's shots. When that happens, lanes can open up for the Cavs' ultra-quick trio of penetrators -- LeBron, Williams and West -- to scoot inside for shots or to draw fouls. When those three are getting to the rim, the Cavs' offense is purring like a finely-tuned engine.

3. Delonte West can play taller than his height

It might seem like a stretch to ask a 6'-3" guard to take a turn checking a 6'-10" forward like Turkoglu or Lewis. But how about a 6'-8" guard?

West is listed at 6'-3", but with long arms that allow him to guard and contest the shots of taller players. West is a legitimate option to slow Turkoglu or Lewis on the perimeter. He won't block any shots against a 6'-10" player, but if he can stay close to his man and put a hand in his face during every shot, that might be defense enough.

4. Howard can rebound. The rest of the Magic ... not so much

Howard can be a one-man wrecking crew in the low post. But when he's on the bench, the Magic's lack of quality big man depth can be exploited. Gortat and Tony Battie are Orlando's two primary bench bigs, and though Gortat did an admirable job filling in for Howard during his one-game, first-round suspension, he's probably not going to outplay any starting-caliber opponent for long stretches.

Gortat averaged 4.5 rebounds per game during the regular season, in 12.6 minutes per game. That still made Gortat the Magic's fourth-leading rebounder after Howard (13.8), Lewis (5.7) and Turkoglu (5.3). In the playoffs, the disparity has become even greater, as Howard has jumped to 16.6 boards per game, with Lewis at 6.2 and Turkoglu at 3.7, a half-rebound better than Gortat's 3.2. Gortat is playing an average of 11.7 minutes per game in the playoffs, while Lewis is averaging over 40 minutes and Turkoglu over 37.

Compare that with the Cavs, who have LeBron at 9.8 rebounds per game in the postseason, along with Anderson Varejao at 7.3, Zydrunas Ilgauskas at 6.6 and Joe Smith at 5.1. The Cavs might not have a Howard to dominate inside, but their rebounding workload is spread much more evenly across the frontcourt.

5. Live by the three, die by the three

The Magic have been the best road team in the league over the past two years. To a team that has tried to protect their home court the way the Cavs have, it would seem like Orlando would pose a direct threat to their comfort zone.

But a big reason why the Magic have been able to take their game on the road is because they rely heavily on perimeter shooting, which tends to travel well because the size of the ball and the rim never change.

The other side to that sword, however, is that the three-ball is a fickle mistress, capable of stalling out your offense as easily as it can propel you to wins.

In the NBA, a 40-percent three-point shooter is considered very good. That means if you miss six three-pointers of every 10 you take, you are among the best in the league. It's the definition of a low-percentage shot. For a team like the Magic that lacks many other ways to put the ball in the hoop, it's a high-risk, high-reward proposition. And the percentages say Orlando won't stay hot from downtown over the entire course of a seven-game series -- certainly against a team like Cleveland that emphasizes perimeter ball pressure on defense.

Carpe diem

How much credit are you willing to give the Cavaliers?

They're 6-0 in the playoffs. But the '07 team started 6-0 in the playoffs, too, and that team trotted out a starting backcourt of Larry Hughes and Sasha Pavlovic. They've won every game by double digits, but they've done their damage against a demoralized Pistons team and an injury-riddled Hawks team.

It's true that the Cavs haven't really had an opportunity to pick on someone their own size thus far in the postseason. Detroit had been an underachieving lot all year. The Hawks needed seven games to dispatch a rebuilding Miami team, and suffered injuries to two starters for their trouble.

With that in mind, you might say that if the Cavs manage to reach the conference finals without disturbing the loss column, no one is going to give them a medal of valor. It's the outcome we're expecting. A team that won 66 regular season games should be vanquishing their early-round opponents like this, after all.

To that, I say: It's amazing what a few months of success can do to one's sense of entitlement. If you feel that way, it's a good thing the Cavs players don't.

No matter how much you might want to believe that these early series were over before they even started, that's simply not the case. Much like a duck's placid glide across a pond belies webbed feet furiously kicking below the surface, there is a whole lot of work and a whole lot of determination that goes into what the Cavs have accomplished thus far in the playoffs.

The Cavs are dominating teams because they are preparing to dominate teams. They are working to impose their collective will on every game. They are out-hustling, out-defending and out-executing their opponents. That doesn't just happen because one team is better than the other.

The Washington Wizards gave us all a reminder of what can happen when an elite team doesn't take a lesser team seriously enough. Washington beat the Cavs twice this year, and nearly beat them a third time.

What the Cavs have done during the regular season and in the postseason so far is the mark of a special team. The Cavs have had their mental lapses this year, as all teams do occasionally, but they have been isolated incidents. With few exceptions, this team's resolve has been steeled, their unity galvanized and their commitment to improvement unwavering.

That's how you loot and pillage your way through six playoff games. A lesser team might still have started the postseason 6-0, but it's a virtual guarantee that they wouldn't have netted six comfortable wins. The Cavs have gone nearly three weeks into the 2009 playoffs, and so far, a fourth quarter hiccup in Game 2 against the Pistons -- a Detroit comeback that didn't venture any closer than eight points -- is what counts for a tense moment in this Cavs playoff run.

What you are seeing is the result of a team with rare chemistry, a team of veteran millionaires willing to let their superstar leader lead, and a superstar leader who is willing to let his coach do the coaching.

It's not something that just happens, putting 15 millionaires in a locker room and having them emerge with impeccable chemistry and well-defined roles. It takes a lot of work. It takes a bunch ego-driven professional athletes putting their personal agendas aside, allowing LeBron soak up the spotlight and grab the lion's share of the accolades without letting jealousy seep into the locker room culture, and above all, adhering to Mike Brown's defense-first principles.

This is a special team storming through a special season. The same cast of characters might return next year and, for varying reasons, the performance and chemistry might not totally be the same.

The Cavs are doing what a 66-win one-seed is supposed to do -- get through the early rounds of the playoffs with little-to-no drama. But this is also a team that is having a rare run of dominance. It won't always be like this, so savor it.

It takes a lot of work to make beating the Pistons and Hawks look this easy. And, for that, the Cavs players and coaches should receive credit from the fans and media.

That damn 'Tessie'

Can I let you in on a little secret?

I can't stand Boston sports. No, I really can't stand any team in that town. It doesn't matter if we're talking Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, Boston College or anything else. Cleveland doesn't even have a hockey team, and I'd probably still find myself grinding my teeth if the Bruins won the Stanley Cup. That sentiment probably puts me in league with a lot of Cleveland fans -- and fans across the country, for that matter.

I can't stand the way their teams win with such regularity, the way the national media fawns over their every success, the incredible superiority complex it lends their fans, and the way their fans take that superiority complex to your town, your stadium, your arena, your bars and your neighborhood. You think every Sox fan lives within a traffic jam of the Mass Pike? The one who lives down the street from you just bought his first David Ortiz shirt in 2004. Right about the same time his Derek Jeter shirt got buried at the bottom of his dresser drawer.

I can't stand the way every Boston championship after even a quasi-dry spell is painted in the media as a triumph for all mankind. OK, I'll give them 86 years without a World Series title. But 22 years between NBA titles? Get bent. Far over. Please.

I can't stand Kevin Garnett's scowling, Cowher-esque jaw-jutting and F-bombs. I can't stand Paul Pierce and his screaming at the rafters. I can't stand Rajon Rondo busting Chicago's Brad Miller in the chops and getting off with a slap on the wrist.

I can't stand the fact that Manny Ramirez accomplished everything there that he couldn't here. I can't stand the 2-0 series lead the Indians blew in the 1999 division series and the 3-1 ALCS lead they blew in 2007. I couldn't stand Pedro Martinez then and I can't stand Jonathan Papelbon now. I can't Dustin Pedroia's snotty MVP video game commercial or the way they call Ortiz "Big Papi" in that New England accent that anglicizes everything. It's supposed to sound like "Poppy," not "Pappy."

I can't stand Tom Brady's elevation to the status of Ultimate Alpha Male. I can't stand the fact that Bill Belichick is a borderline-sinister tactician who didn't perfect his craft until he arrived in New England, until it was too late to save the Browns from the clutches of Baltimore. And I hate that the current owner of the Browns is locked in a perpetual, and likely futile, series of attempts to discover his own version of Belichick.

Jealous much? You're damn right. Because Boston is one of those cities where, when they're on top, you know it. You can't ignore it. It's been that way for years -- decades, actually.

Boston's sporting brashness was likely born in the working-class saloons of 19th Century Irish-immigrant Boston, when Boston was still a National League town and baseball games were the exclusive territory of men who could hold down a few pints. Then Boston became an American League town in 1901, and two years later, won the first-ever World Series by beating the Pittsburgh Pirates.

During that series, Boston's fans -- led by the "Royal Rooters," baseball's first widely-recognized group of superfans, helped their American League team's cause by making sure the song "Tessie" stayed in the ear of Honus Wagner and his Pittsburgh teammates. "Tessie" was featured in a Broadway show called "The Silver Slipper" that debuted in 1902. By 1903, the song was famous enough that the Royal Rooters adopted it, made up some new lyrics and used it to harass the Pittsburgh players.

After the series, Pittsburgh outfielder Tommy Leach gave an assist in Boston's triumph to "that damn 'Tessie' song.'" And an obnoxious heritage was born.

Now, whenever a Boston team is better than your team, you know it. Their fans make sure of it. Even during a cold, damp April baseball game in Cleveland, as was the case when several thousand Red Sox fans descended on Progressive Field Tuesday, making sure that they did everything in their power to match and surpass the volume of the home crowd. I can only assume the same scene played out on Monday and Wednesday.

The Cleveland crowd, subdued by rain, cold and yet another cruddy April by the home team, was subjected to the ear-grinding passion of the fans -- bandwagon and otherwise -- of a deep-pocketed baseball team that is always one October away from another World Series title. Bambino? Curse? Didn't Bambino play for the Royals back in the '80s? Or was that Balboni?

In my personal experience on Tuesday night, I was subjected to the high-pitched whine of a particularly enthusastic Boston fan sitting right behind me.

"C'mon Youk! YOUUUUUUK!!! C'mon Pappy!! BIIIIG Pappy! WOO!" All that, and he was clapping his hands approximately three millimeters from my ear canal, too.

Eventually, he left his seat, and my eyes were drawn to another Boston fan sitting one row down and about five seats over. Every time Red Sox starter Brad Penny fell behind in the count, this man would start to get agitated. When an Indian got a base hit, he'd throw his hands in the air and glare at the diamond like a man who just found an obscenity scratched into the paint of his car hood.

I've been to other Indians-Red Sox games and I've seen similar Boston behavior during those games, too. But I left Tuesday's game with the overwhelming feeling that it is impossible to enjoy a baseball game for the game's sake when you are with Boston fans. Perhaps outsiders feel the same way about Cleveland fans at a Browns game.

There is no atmosphere to absorb. There is no hanging out at the ballpark to take in the sights and smells during breaks in the action. There are wins and losses. Games won and lost, innings won and lost, at-bats won and lost. That's that.

Perhaps that's the price some Boston fans pay for their passion. There is no now. Now is just a precursor to whatever is next.

Even "Tessie" couldn't stand pat. She got a facelift when the rock band Dropkick Murphys covered the song in 2004. The year Boston's curse ended. The year Boston fans became obsessed with the future instead of the past.

Now, every title Boston wins only feeds that obsession. And every time one of their teams comes to Cleveland, we get to take it all in, every ounce of the endless soap-opera drama that is Boston sports and their legions of fans. Whether we want to or not.

Waking the hare

For the first seven quarters of the Cavs-Pistons series, you could say one definite thing about Detroit's basketball team:

In the immortal words of former Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green, "They are who we thought they were."

For all of Game 1 and the first three quarters of Game 2, the Pistons were in a full-on Fall of Rome state. The team that was once the NBA's Marlboro men -- tough, tougher and staunchly devoted to doing things their way -- looked limp, soggy and resigned to defeat. They didn't have the strength to stop LeBron's muscle-drives inside. They didn't have the speed to stop Mo Williams and his indefatigable darting, dodging, stopping and popping.

They had less energy than Anderson Varejao, less height than Zydrunas Ilgauskas, less grit that Delonte West. They knew it. What's more, the Pistons, to a man, knew they could have avoided all of this if they had just played a little better down the stretch. If they had beaten Chicago one last time, if they hadn't slumped right after clinching a playoff spot, Detroit could have faced the injury-ravaged Celtics, or a team they have recently owned, the Magic.

But they didn't play well enough down the stretch. They sank to the eighth seed, and drew the 66-win Cavs and all 6'-9" and 270 pounds of their superstar battering ram.

The Pistons weren't just discouraged heading into this series. They needed a sympathy card that read "Sorry it All Blew Up in Your Face. Good Luck With the Rebuild."

For seven quarters, the Cavs never stopped reminding the Pistons that the longest six inches in basketball is the distance between the rock and the hard place. Or maybe between the ground and the bottom of Cleveland's collective foot. The Cavs won Game 1 102-84 and held a 79-50 lead through three quarters of Game 2.

Perhaps what happened next was predictable, then.

We learn this type of story in our earliest days of schooling. Usually it involves a tortoise and a hare. The two animals -- one inherently fast and athletic, the other doomed to carry a shell around on its back for all its days -- line up for a foot race. The hare, of course, bursts away from the starting line with speed that the tortoise can't hope to match. Within seconds, the tortoise's view of the hare is reduced to a speck in the distance. Within minutes, the hare has completely disappeared from the tortoise's view.

The mismatch is so thorough, all the tortoise can do is keep his pace and hope that the hare either falls or does something really stupid off in that vast distance the tortoise has yet to cover.

We all remember the outcome. The hare knows his lead has become all but insurmountable, so he takes his victory for granted. He slows up. Still no tortoise. So, he figures "What the heck? I'll rest for a while. I'll still win." The hare lays down by the side of the road, eventually falls asleep, and the tortoise catches and passes the hare, winning the race.

Which begs the question, if it's one of the first cautionary tales you learn as a child, why does it keep creeping up in the adult world? Maybe it's human nature.

Blowout wins, and the spoils that come with them, have become something of a point of pride with the Cavs this year. LeBron didn't play in 14 fourth quarters during the regular season. Williams, West and Ilgauskas have also done considerable pine time while the back of the bench polished off comfy wins.

The Cavs have been masters of making garbage time arrive early this season. So when they toted very nearly a 30-point lead into the fourth quarter on Tuesday, they figured the Victory Fairy had left another quarter under their pillow.

But this was different, because this was the playoffs. No one was playing for a lottery pick. No one was stuck in the midseason doldrums of another game on another long road trip in the dead of winter. Every team good enough to enter the NBA's championship tournament is good enough to be there. Every team is playing to win. That even includes the sagging Pistons.

The Cavs, quite simply, did not respect that fact they way they should have. Not only did Mike Brown bring his starters to the bench, the starters began to power down mentally. Not only did the starters begin to power down mentally, the hybrid second-third unit that replaced them was playing with nary more than their collective mental/emotional pilot light burning.

The Pistons -- even more specifically, Will Bynum -- took advantage of the snoozing hare.

Bynum, performing an excellent impersonation of former Pistons bench scorer extraordinaire Vinnie Johnson, ignited a 27-5 Pistons run that sliced a 79-50 Cleveland lead to 84-77 with just under four minutes to play. For the first time in the series, the Pistons had some real momentum and the Cavs and their fans were sweating one out.

The Cavs failed to score a field goal for about 10 minutes of the fourth quarter, while the Pistons' second unit struck gold. Bynum's 13 points were complimented by Aaron Afflalo's 10, and some positive contributions from the underrated Walter Herrmann that didn't show up on the stat sheet.

Meanwhile, a Cavs lineup fronted by Wally Szczerbiak, Daniel Gibson and Joe Smith stagnated at the offensive end, slowed at the defensive end and made a number of unforced errors. If it wasn't for 27 Detroit personal fouls leading to a staggering 43-16 Cavs advantage in free throw attempts, the outcome of the game could have been left very much in doubt. Teams that go on 27-5 fourth quarter runs are likely the winners in most such games. Teams that go 10 fourth-quarter minutes without a field goal are likely the losers.

Of course, without that massive free throw disparity contributing to the lopsided score through three quarters, the Cavs don't play the role of the hare in this race. LeBron and the starters stay in the game and don't try to turn the sidelines into premature party central.

But this is the burden that falls on the shoulders of a team that has been as dominant as the Cavs have this year. Teams will never underestimate the Cavs. Even the most downtrodden of clubs will start to believe that they can slay Goliath if they can find the right stone. The Cavs, on the other hand, need to check their collective ego once in a while before someone checks it for them.

That is what happened Tuesday: an ego check. The Cavs might be the preordained winners of this series, but they still have to actually win four games to advance. And there is no way the Cavs should ever assume that the Pistons, no matter how beaten down they are, will simply lay down and concede the series to Cleveland.

It's the first rule of competition in any form: respect your opponent. Respect their ability to compete. For a sizable chunk of the fourth quarter on Tuesday, the Cavs didn't do that.

Luckily, unlike in the fable, this hare woke up in time to avert a disastrous loss -- even before the outcome of the game was put into serious doubt. But the Pistons' fourth-quarter run still might have given them a toe-hold, however small, in this series as they head back home for Game 3 on Friday -- not enough to sway the series in their favor necessarily, but maybe enough to prolong it. That is not what the Cavs want or need.

If the Pistons even extend this series to six games, the Cavs will have lost a little something. A little bit of rest, a little bit of swagger, a little bit of invincibility. And it will be that much tougher to regain that aura facing the winner of the Hawks-Heat series.

Let this be the year

On the eve of the Cavs' playoff run, to whom it may concern:

Let this be the year.

Let this be the year when we finally have a happy ending.

Let this be the year when the other shoe doesn't drop.

Let this be the year free from John Elway, Michael Jordan and dream assassins from other teams.

Let this be the year free from Jose Mesa, Red Right 88 and dream saboteurs from our own teams.

Let this be the year when having the best record in the league matters.

Let this be the year when having the best player matters.

Let this be the year free from Jim Chones' foot, John Smiley's arm and LeCharles Bentley's knee.

Let this be the year when Jim Poole doesn't stay in the game to bat.

Let this be the year when Jeremiah Castille doesn't come out of nowhere to strip the ball two feet from paydirt.

Let this be the year when we solve Josh Beckett. Let this be the year without a Craig Counsell or Dusty Rhodes.

Let this be the year when Willie Mays doesn't make an impossible catch.

Let this be the year when we don't fumble the ball out of bounds with the clock winding down, when the ball-handler doesn't slip and fall on the game's last possession. Let this be the year when the critical pass isn't intercepted, when the critical shot doesn't rim out, when the critical whistles and non-whistles fall in our favor.

Let this be the year when the free throws go in and the back-taps find teammates.

Let this be the year when the Boston leprechaun isn't lucky, when Orlando isn't magic, when the Lakers aren't Showtime.

Let this be the year when we don't dread what might be around the corner. Let this be the year when confidence replaces fear. Let this be the year we truly believe, not just hope for the best.

Let this be the year of unbreakable resolve, both on the part of the team and the fans. Let this be the year where we realize that if we want what has eluded us for 45 years, we're going to have to take it. Nobody is going to give it to us.

Let this be the year that the rags finally turn to riches in this rust belt town. Let this be the year when the parade weaves its way down Euclid Avenue, not through downtown Boston or Los Angeles -- or worse yet, Disney World.

Let this be the year when justice is served, when the fans most deserving of tasting a title's sweetness finally get that chance.

Let this be the year of a 16-win postseason.

Let this be the year that Cleveland, after nearly half a century, once again becomes a championship town.

One more record

The Cavaliers made their rarefied air a bit more rarefied on Monday night, ascending to the NBA's regular season summit with their 66th win of the season.

For the first time in 39 years of basketball, the Cavs will finish the season with the NBA's best record. No matter who they play in the upcoming playoff rounds, they will have homecourt advantage.

Not even the mighty 1995 Indians could claim that, thanks to baseball's wacky pre-determined seeding of the time. Despite finishing with the best record in baseball that year, the Indians didn't have homefield advantage in any round of the playoffs that year. It played a role in their World Series loss to the Braves. Without the benefit of the designated hitter, the Indians and their powerful offense lost three low-scoring, one-run games in Atlanta in that series.

In 2007, after baseball got their league-playoff act together and started awarding homefield advantage to the teams with the better records, the Indians tied the Red Sox for the best record in baseball -- but lost homefield advantage on the head-to-head tiebreak, helping to pave the way for the Tribe's ALCS collapse.

Viewed in the light of what happened to the 100-win Indians of 14 years ago and the 96-win Indians of two years ago, the Cavs are aligned better for a title run than any Cleveland team since the '86 Browns, who finished with the AFC's best record at 12-4 that year, hosting both their conference playoff games. Even then, that doesn't account for a neutral-site Super Bowl or the fact that the NFC was the stronger conference that year, boasting the 14-2 Bears and eventual Super Bowl champion 14-2 Giants.

The Cavs don't have to worry about tiebreaks, pre-determined homecourt advantage, neutral-site championship games or anything of the sort. The Lakers have 17 losses. The Cavs can't lose more than 16. Mathematically, the Cavs have clinched everything they can possibly clinch during the regular season. And they still have a game left to play, Wednesday night at home against the 76ers.

Mission accomplished, at least until the playoffs start this weekend.

But something else is dangling out there as the Cavs prepare to wrap up the regular season on Wednesday. It would look nice in the glossy pages of the team's media guide for years to come. It would put the Cavs in the conversation among the greatest single-season teams of all time, should they win the NBA title. But now that the league's best record has been clinched, what does it really mean?

Should the Cavs play for the win on Wednesday, and try to tie the 1985-86 Celtics for the best home record ever at 40-1? Or would it be foolish to eschew big-picture thinking in the pursuit of one last regular season win?

Basically, there are two schools of thought on this: The argument against playing to win says you shouldn't risk unnecessary fatigue and/or injury to your key players by playing them big minutes in a game that has no meaning in the standings. The argument in favor of playing to win says you don't get a chance to grab a piece of history like this very often, so why would you throw it away without trying to attain it?

I've carefully considered the pros and cons, and I say Mike Brown should let them play. The Cavs should treat Wednesday's game like they would any other regular season game, not like a preseason game in April.

The fatigue argument loses a lot of voltage when you consider that LeBron is averaging 37.7 minutes per game, by far a career low. The Cavs have been on the happy side of blowouts on such a regular basis this season, LeBron and the rest of the varsity team have turned fourth-quarter bench clowning into an art form. That's why you let your starters rest during the waning minutes of lopsided contests, so they're fresher at this time of the year.

Don't risk injuries? I suppose. But no one in Cleveland needs to be reminded that Jim Chones broke his foot in practice prior to the 1976 Eastern Conference Finals. There is no guarantee that holding players out of a game will completely thwart the injury threat. In order to do that, you'd need to cancel practices, be sure that every player refrains from heavy lifting, from using sharp kitchen utensils and from straying too near car windows while tossing around the pigskin (I'm looking at you, Ben Wallace).

The arguments for mothballing half the roster on Wednesday are rooted more in fear and a desire to stay away from the hand of fate, which Clevelanders are conditioned to believe is never more than a smite away.

The arguments for treating Wednesday's contest as another regular season game seem far more compelling from where I sit.

First off and most compelling is the chance to finish the regular season 40-1 at home, reaching a milestone that has been previously reached by only the '85-'86 Celtics, universally considered one of the best NBA teams of all time.

Even in the best of years, 40 home wins is an historic accomplishment. The 72-10 Bulls of 1995-96 went 39-2 at home. The 69-13 Lakers of 1971-72 went 36-5 at home. Those teams are considered the best in NBA history, and they couldn't accomplish what the Cavs have a chance to accomplish on Wednesday.

A chance like this comes around maybe once for a franchise -- and a lot of franchises will never get this chance. All but a microscopic sliver of NBA players will ever get to say they played on a team that finished 40-1 at home -- or even had that chance. The historical ramifications alone are hard to resist.

If you'd rather hear a more practical argument that has less to do with legacies and more to do with the here and now, there's this: What good would a week off do for a team that has been thriving on rhythm and chemistry all year?

Wallace's aching joints need rest. And that's exactly what Wallace will get as he recovers from a knee tendon strain. Zydrunas Ilgauskas can probably use whatever rest he can get. Brown can monitor his minutes with a little extra vigilance on Wednesday. Same for Joe Smith.

But spry youngsters like LeBron, Mo Williams, Delonte West and Anderson Varejao? What good will the balance of a week off do for them at this point in the season? All they could possibly accomplish is gathering rust and losing focus as they sit around waiting for the playoffs to start.

At this point, with 81 games down and one regular season game plus playoffs to go, there is no reason to deviate from what has gotten the team to this point, especially considering the fact that Wednesday's game is the only game between now and the weekend.

If the Cavs can manage to turn Wednesday's game into a laugher in the second half, I'm all in favor of taking LeBron and the starters out as soon as the game is in hand. But this is no time to sit your starters after the jump ball.

The Cavs have worked all season to secure homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs, and they've worked all season to put themselves on the verge of matching the best home record of all time. They deserve this chance. They also deserve the chance to arrive in the playoffs with momentum, not burdened by a week's worth of rust.

Rivalries renewed

In Cleveland, we don't have to be taught how to hold our teams' rivals in seething contempt. It's a seed that sprouts in our brains sometime between birth and introduction to solid foods. We don't learn rival-hate, so much as the instinct is awakened in us.

At least two generations of Browns fans grew up loathing the Steelers. A new generation will be raised to hold the Ravens at very nearly the same level of contempt. Like scarlet and gray? You don't like maize and blue. The Red Sox and Yankees might have the most famous rivalry in baseball -- maybe in all of sports -- but the Indians have their separate longstanding rivalry with each. Time tells the truth, even if Boston and New York fans don't want to admit it. The Tribe's feud with baseball's titans goes back more than a century to the first years of the American League.

Then there are the Cavaliers. Professional basketball is something of a strange animal in Northeast Ohio. The Cavs have been playing basketball since 1970, plenty of time to develop heated rivalries with a number of teams, plenty of time for area fans to align themselves against those teams, year in and year out, regardless of win-loss record.

But those rivalries haven't developed, at least not to the extent of the blood rivalries that carry us through Browns, Indians and Buckeye football seasons.

There are a number of reasons why. Most glaring, for about 80 percent of their history, the Cavs weren't good enough to develop rivalries. They didn't pose a threat to any contender, and if a contender came to town and walloped the Cavs, how was that different from any other game? Going a step further, a great number of local fans embraced Magic Johnson's Lakers, Larry Bird's Celtics and Michael Jordan's Bulls, including a certain hometown star who now wears Jordan's No. 23. Those teams won. They were exciting. They had star power. The Cavs didn't.

Of course, those frontrunning fans, showing up to The Coliseum in opposing garb, helped cause the first pangs of true rivalry bloodlust in Cavs fans in the late '80s, when the team finally emerged from the doldrums to become a legitimate threat to the Eastern Conference power teams of the era. Conveniently, those teams happened to be the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls, rivals with relatively close geographical proximity.

When the Coliseum-era Cavs of Mark Price and Brad Daugherty reached their zenith between 1989 and '92, the Pistons and Bulls ruled the league. Detroit captured NBA titles in 1989 and '90, and the Bulls ran off their first pair in 1991 and '92. The Cavs, though a quality team, remained a stepping stone. Jordan, injuries and the Ron Harper for Danny Ferry trade kept them there.

The Cavs wilted down the stretch in the '88-'89 season, losing the division to Detroit and the first round of the playoffs on Jordan's Shot. That season featured Price's infamous run-in with Rick Mahorn's elbow, leaving Price with a concussion and possibly contributing to the Cavs' late-season dropoff.

In '91-'92, arguably the most successful Cavs season prior to this season, the Cavs tied a team record with 57 wins, but still finished 10 games behind the 67-15 Bulls. They eased past the Nets in the first round, ended Larry Bird's career with a Game 7 elimination in Round 2, but fell to the Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals. A Jordan buzzer-beater eliminated the Cavs again one year later, this time in the second round, though that shot sealed a sweep.

The seeds for two bitter rivalries had been sown, but that era of Cavs basketball ended soon thereafter. Injuries ended the careers of Daugherty and Larry Nance by 1994. Price was traded to Washington in 1995. Jordan retired to play minor league baseball, then returned stronger than ever. The Pistons drafted Grant Hill, but then adopted a curious color scheme of teal, dark red and gold, and faded into relative obscurity.

The Cavs really had no rivals until LeBron landed in their laps, and the Pistons reclaimed their red, white and blue colors and their standing as a title-winning defensive juggernaut in the mid-2000s. The teams have met twice in the playoffs, the Pistons escaping with a seven-game conference semifinals victory in 2006, and the Cavs winning their first conference title over the Pistons a year later.

The re-emergence of the Celtics has caused the simmering rivalry between LeBron and Paul Pierce to blossom into a full-fledged team rivalry, though Cleveland's dislike of the Celtics still stems more from an overall dislike of Boston sports and their mouthy fans in general. Losing to the Celtics during the title run a year ago helped fan the flames in no small part, however.

But the rivalry history of the Cavs is still somewhat muddled and incomplete. If the Pistons and Bulls, and more recently the Celtics, are the Cavs' chief rivals, there haven't been many meaningful games played between the Cavs and their rivals over the years. The Cavs are 0-5 in playoff series against the Bulls, and the '89 and '92 series were the only ones that were really competitive. The Cavs had never played the Pistons in the playoffs prior to '06. The last two Cavs-Celtics playoff series went seven games, but occurred 16 years apart.

But this year, the longest chapter in the history of Cavs' rivalries might be written in the playoffs. With the Cavs almost certain to lock up the East's 1-seed sometime between now and early next week, and the Pistons and Bulls seemingly destined to decide the seventh and eighth seeds between themselves, the Cavs will apparently face one or the other in the first round.

If it's Chicago, it need not be mentioned that these aren't the Jordan Bulls. Jordan's departure from the Bulls organization in 1998 let most of the air out of any semblance of a rivalry with Chicago. But it's still the team that dominated the Cavs in the playoffs those many years ago, and there hasn't been an opportunity for payback until now.

Making the prospect of a Bulls-Cavs first round series even sweeter is the fact that the Bulls have been declawed as a conference title threat, and would present the Cavs an opportunity for a first-round beatdown. Not that Chicago is going to suffer the slings and arrows. An 8-seed Bulls team ranks far behind the Cubs and the Jay Cutler-fortified Bears on the scale of importance to the average Chicago fan.

The Pistons would present a unique challenge to the Cavs. They're not your typical wet-behind-the-ears 8-seed playoff team. They're certainly not the force they were even a year ago, but this is still a veteran team that has been to the conference finals in each of the past six seasons. They're still capable of playing defense at a high level, still steeled to playoff pressure and still capable of making jump shots in bunches. Detroit's playoff seeding will be artificially lowered this year by injuries and some questionable coaching and front office decisions. This is still the roster of a 4-seed or 5-seed team, and they're going to be a tough out for whoever draws them.

The Cavs should still defeat Chicago or Detroit in the first round, possibly setting up the first-ever playoff series between LeBron and Dwyane Wade, should Miami advance past their first round opponent (likely Atlanta). Knock out Wade and the Heat, and the prize would almost certainly be Pierce and the Celtics or Dwight Howard and the Magic in the conference finals. Advance to the NBA Finals, and LeBron will probably find Kobe Bryant and the Lakers waiting.

If you haven't learned to spew venom at other NBA teams they way you do the Steelers and Yankees, this might be the Spring That Launched A Thousand Rivalries.

When the opposing team takes free throws at The Q, a common Cavs practice is to flash Steelers, Michigan, Yankees and Red Sox logos on the scoreboard to get the crowd booing. This spring might represent a large step toward ensuring that, when the opposing team is lining up for a field goal attempt at a future Browns game, a Celtics or Lakers logo will flash on the Cleveland Browns Stadium scoreboard.

What to expect?

The Indians are an ambiguous team as the 2009 season dawns.

In years past, we'd be able to get an idea of whether the Indians would excel in the rotation, in the bullpen or in the batting lineup. This year, it's kind of difficult to gauge what, exactly, we should expect of this team. Mark Shapiro's moves this offseason, Travis Hafner's lingering production problems, Cliff Lee's putrid spring training performance, and the overall talent and experience levels on the roster, invite enough speculation to make you believe this team could lose 90 games. Or everything could come together and they could win 90. Or they could split the difference and go 81-81 again.

There are some other obvious reasons behind the fog that encases the start of the Tribe's season. For the first time since 2000, the Indians will enter a season without C.C. Sabathia in the starting rotation. Lee is the staff ace based on his Cy Young credentials of last season, but he's also less than two years removed from the worst season of his career, and he's coming off an 0-3, 12.42 ERA spring training effort.

The rest of the rotation doesn't build much confidence, either. Fausto Carmona has electric stuff, but can't find the strike zone with regularity. Carl Pavano hasn't pieced together a decent, injury-resistant season in five years. Jake Westbrook is out until at least midsummer as he continues the long road back from Tommy John surgery. Anthony Reyes hasn't proven anything over the long haul. Scott Lewis, Aaron Laffey, Jeremy Sowers and Zach Jackson? Roll the dice.

In short, the starting rotation feels more like a starting dartboard. Three of these guys have to come somewhere close to the bullseye for the Indians to mount a serious challenge in the AL Central this year.

The state of the bullpen breeds much more confidence than at this time last year, mainly because someone besides Joe Borowski will break camp as the team's closer. Kerry Wood is likely bound for the disabled list at some point this season, but hopefully the injury is of the muscle strain variety, and wont involve the insertion of scalpels and/or arthroscopes into his person. But if he can stay active for the majority of the season, particularly the stretch run, the Indians might have their best door-slammer since Jose Mesa in the mid-90s.

The spring training performances of Rafael Perez (1.00 ERA in nine innings pitched) and Jensen Lewis (1.64 ERA in 11 IP) are positive developments in the construction of a setup corps to get to Wood -- something that was painfully absent from the Tribe's 'pen a year ago. Now if Rafael Betancourt (6.24 ERA in 8.2 IP) could just get on track and stay healthy, the bullpen could even be considered "deep."

Spring training saw a number of good individual performances from the hitters. Jhonny Peralta, Ben Francisco and Victor Martinez all tied for the team lead with 13 RBI. Peralta batted. 391 for the spring, Grady Sizemore hit .373 and Mark DeRosa hit .364 upon returning to the Tribe after the World Baseball Classic.

Then again, read into spring training hitting statistics at your own risk. Hitters' swings are often well ahead of pitchers' arms for most of spring training. By the time the Indians leave the Launching Pad at Arlington and head north to open the home portion of their schedule this coming weekend, their hitting prowess might drop like the temperature between Texas and Ohio.

But the weather will warm, and baseball's marathon schedule will allow water to find its level over the span of the next six months. But what is the water's level with regard to some of the Tribe's more important players? Below is how I see some players trending during the 2009 season.

Cliff Lee: Down

It's not just that the law of averages is bound to catch up to Lee after his freakishly good 2008. It's not just that he wilted in the Arizona heat this spring. It's that Lee has, historically, given up a lot of hits and a lot of runs. He has also historically not had the pinpoint control of his fastball that he showed a year ago.

Unfortunately, a regression to the mean for Lee might mean a regression to a middle-of-the rotation starter, complete with a near-.500 record and ERA in the mid-4.00's. Lee has had a couple of excellent years in 2005 and '08, but the "real" Cliff Lee is probably closer to what he showed in 2006 (14-11, 4.40 ERA).

Having said all of that, Lee is still a solid pitcher, even if he doesn't approach last year's levels. if it contributes to a postseason berth, I think we'd all be thrilled if he could repeat his 18-5, 3.79 performance from '05.

Victor Martinez: Up

Last season was an injury-wracked year for V-Mart. He only played in 73 games, only hit two homers, but still managed to pull his batting average out of the muck and hit .278 with 17 doubles and 35 RBI when all was said and done.

Martinez is one of the two most talented hitters on the Indians roster, and I expect a healthy Martinez to bounce back with a vengeance this year. Prior to last season, he was an automatic .300, 30 doubles and 70 RBI for three seasons. Now fully healthy at the outset of the season for the first time since 2007, Martinez might even exceed those numbers.

Mark DeRosa: Up

When the Indians first acquired DeRosa, my initial reaction was to dismiss him as a glorified utility player, another in a long line of "grinders" routinely overvalued by Mark Shapiro and Eric Wedge.

But a small sample viewing size during spring training and the WBC have changed my opinion, to a degree. DeRosa can hit, and he can play a little defense, too. DeRosa is still a third baseman trapped in a middle infielder's body as far as I am concerned, but if the object of contact hitting is to put a hard swing on the ball and force the fielders to make plays, DeRosa can do that, probably to the tune of a .280 average and 60-70 RBI.

Fausto Carmona: Down

You might think Carmona is already "down" after an 8-7, 5.44 ERA, injury-plagued 2008. And you're right. But adding to Carmona's problems is the expectations placed on him to regain his 2007 form and fill a spot at the front of the rotation. At this point in his career, I have to questions whether Carmona can do that.

Carmona seems primed to spend his 2009 showing us flashes of his '07 brilliance followed by long stretches of pitching out of the stretch, because he can't stop walking hitters.

As a sinkerballer, Carmona relies on getting batters to put the ball in play, but that obviously won't happen with any frequency if he's constantly falling behind in the count. The net result, in addition to bases on balls, is a rapidly-elevated pitch count that might force Carmona's exit from many starts in the fifth or sixth innings -- even when he's pitching relatively well.

Travis Hafner: Up

With Pronk, "up" is a relative term. A batting average in the mid-.200s and 25 homers would be an improvement over his .197/5 HR/24 RBI/57 game debacle of 2008.

The 2004-06 Hafner is gone forever. Debate the reasons why until Barry Bonds comes home, but at the end of the day, a 2007 redux (.266, 24 HR, 100 RBI) is a good year from this version of Pronk.

Grady Sizemore: Steady

Yeah, his batting average has been on a steady decline for three seasons. But when his other stats are as rock-solid as Sizemore's were a year ago (33 HR, 39 doubles, 38 steals, 90 RBI) and he's durable enough to never have played in fewer than 157 games in each of the last four years, I think you can afford to be a little flexible with the batting average gripes.

The fact remains that Sizemore really isn't a leadoff hitter. He plays the part well enough -- a testament to his talent -- but he takes a lot of swings, and a byproduct of that is a lot of strikeouts. It's a take-the-good-with-the-bad proposition. Without the aggressive approach at the plate and on the bases, Sizemore isn't a 30/30/30 man.

Jhonny Peralta: Steady

Maybe he won't repeat last year's 42-double performance. But if he splits the difference between '07 and '08, ending up with a batting average in the .270s, 20 homes and 30 doubles, that's a productive year for Peralta. Like Sizemore, he strikes out too much, and his long swing can be an out-producer as much as a run-producer. But taken at face value, Peralta is a solid contributor, and that should continue in '09.

The light at night

Following a winning Cleveland team is a sensory experience for me.

It's more than just flashes of pixel-color in the squared off world of the TV set. It's more than e-mail banter at the office or picking up the newspaper to see the day's headline after a big win.

To me, it's all five senses. The team colors visible around town, the music that marks the era, the smells and tastes on the air, how the air feels against your skin. Not just at the ballpark or arena, but in day to day life. It's more than just a season of dreams. It's a series of snapshots in time taken through all my senses. I want to drink it all in and hold it, so I can pull it back out and live it again in a future daydream.

When the Indians were a force in the 1990s, October would signal its arrival with shorter days and chilly nights that seemed to add to the electricity around town, particularly in the mid-'90s when winning was new and exciting. It did something to the air. It wasn't just the drop in temperature. The air felt different. It smelled different. Anticipation made it different.

Growing up as a Yankees fan in New York, Billy Crystal used to refer to it as "World Series weather." Of course, that was back in the days before playoffs decided the league pennants each year. Now, World Series weather is also the property of the ALCS and NLCS, maybe even a few divsion series games if a cold front hits the right area.

What is climatologically true in New York is also true in Cleveland or any other city in the country's northern tiers. Maybe we'd have the same feelings if we were all living in Florida as Marlins and Rays fans, and the baseball playoffs occurred in the same cloak of heat and humidity that drapes itself over most of the regular season. But I don't think it would. Maybe that's just my cold-weather upbringing talking.

The crisp nights and shorter days make cities like Cleveland snap to attention, out of the lazy late-summer doldrums and into the here-and-now of a championship run.

Following the Cavs through a couple of deep playoff runs, and gearing up for what might be the deepest run in team history, I've spent the past few springs looking for the same feelings that I used to get in the Octobers of my more formative years.

Can there be an October in May and June? It turns out, there can be.

The feeling is there, with a reversal of the weather. Just like the October chill brings something extra to a pennant chase, the spring thaw brings new excitement to a contending basketball season. Night basketball games with daylight starts mean something. It's spring. Your team is in the playoffs. If you're so fortunate, you team might still be playing when shorts and t-shirt weather arrives.

Basketball on the precipice of summer is the best kind. It the kind that fans in just two or four cities get a chance to experience each year. It's national-stage basketball -- heck, world-stage basketball. It's an experience just to touch the hem on its garment, especially in a city like Cleveland, where something that big can't possibly be ignored.

In 2007, on the off-day between Games 3 and 4 of the NBA Finals, I made it a point to head downtown just to see the pomp and circumstance, the giant inflatable Larry O'Brien Trophy out on the plaza next to The Q, all the signage, the souvenir stands. I wanted to be a part of basketball's biggest stage on a warm June night. The Cavs were in an 0-3 hole and about to be swept, but I just wanted to take it all in. A lot of fans had the same idea. Hundreds stood, watched, took pictures, lapped the Q to take in the whole scene.

It was something of a pilgrimage by fans who had never experienced the NBA Finals before. They wanted to drink it all in, because who knows when the circus is going to come to town again.

This is basketball, away from winter's grasp, just like baseball removed from summer's embrace. Every time it comes around, it means something different. Something unpredictable. Something that rallies the whole city.

Something, we endlessly hope, will someday produce a title, a trophy, and a parade attended by thousands.

A strange equation

What do you get when mix two potential starting quarterbacks with a depleted-by-design receiving corps, and top it off with the mentoring of Brett Favre?

It's kind of hard to tell, but we might find out this summer. What we do know it that the long, strange saga of the Cleveland Browns might become palpably more interesting in the next six months, if not more successful.

If nothing else, Eric Mangini is walking to his own beat as the guru of Browns football operations. He's scrapping the receiving unit with little indication of what is to follow. Kellen Winslow is gone, Joe Jurevicius is gone, Braylon Edwards' name has reportedly come up in trade talks, and David Patten has made his triumphant return to Cleveland.

Oh, yeah -- Donte Stallworth killed a man with his car, too. That adds another layer of complexity to the matter of who is going to be catching passes for the Browns this fall.

While the receving unit withers away, Mangini and GM George Kokinis are apparently committed to returning both Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn to training camp this summer, and letting the pair battle it out for the starting job in an open competition.

If this isn't a rebuild, it sure as heck feels like one. Mangini is throwing two quarterbacks against the proverbial wall to see which one sticks better. If Edwards is jettisoned, neither one will have much to work with in the way of playmaking receivers, thanks to the "remodeling -- pardon our dust" sign hung on the entire unit.

Unless Mangini has some unforeseen tricks up his sleeve, 2009 looks to be a season of discovery for the new Browns regime. And by discovery, I mean lots of tinkering coupled with losing as Mangini tries to figure out how to piece together a winning organization from a hybrid of his personnel and Phil Savage's personnel. The result for '09 will be some kind of transitional, mutant football team.

It's perhaps the most maddening part of a regime change -- all the truths that we as fans have already found to be self-evident need to be proven all over again to the new guys in charge. We already know that Anderson completes underneath passes with the same velvety touch as a jackhammer. We already know Jamal Lewis will cry to the media when he doesn't get his totes. We already know Kamerion Wimbley is a one-trick pass rushing pony. Mangini and Kokinis have yet to discover some, or all, of these things. Film can give you an idea of what you're getting yourself into, but until a coach has actually watched his players in action, it's hard to pass accurate judgments.

For the fans who have watched the pathetic football parade of the past 10 years, however, we can go ahead and flip to the back page of the novel. We already know the answers to the questions.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence that Mangini is still feeling his way along is the news on Wednesday that he has reportedly asked Brett Favre to come to Cleveland as a quarterback consultant, helping to perhaps tutor Anderson and Quinn, or maybe simply to help Mangini sort through the oncoming QB controversy.

It would be a thrill in many ways to have one of modern era's truly elite quarterbacks in camp, wearing the team colors, imparting years of knowledge onto the Browns' pair of young signal-callers. But the backfire potential is also great.

It's hard to envision Favre accepting a background role. Maybe he would. Maybe he's finally content with his decision to retire. I'd rather labor under the assumption that once a waffler, always a waffler. And the last thing the Browns need in camp is two young QBs and an aging QB who has once again caught the football bug.

Don't just imagine Brett Favre in a Browns uniform. Imagine the firestorm of media coverage and heaven knows what else that would descend on Browns camp if Favre suddenly decided that he enjoyed playing for Mangini, if he decided that the best way to solve the Browns' QB problem is to strap on a helmet and take the field. Who is going to deny him, especially in an organization desperate for success and positive PR?

Imagine Anderson and Quinn stapled to the bench because Favre, once again, couldn't let the spotlight go, and try to tell me that would be healthy for the Browns organization in the long run.


Maybe I'm jumping way ahead of myself, but Favre has already backtracked once. Even if he is 100 percent retired, Favre would still overshadow a great deal of the goings-on at Browns camp by his mere presence, even if he's just wearing a cap and t-shirt and pacing the sidelines.

Favre has a lot of information that could be valuable to a young quarterback. Maybe he could help Mangini sort out this two-horse race. But there are too many plot threads dangling out there for me to think it would be as simple as Favre coming to town and teaching Mangini's young charges the ABC's of winning in the NFL.

At this point, it's all speculation. You could still color me surprised if Favre is in town at the start of training camp. But there is a little food for thought to go along with the intrigue.

When you step back and take it all in -- the dismantling of the receiving corps, the decision to stick with both Anderson and Quinn, the invitation extended to Favre -- it's a curious equation that might only make sense to Mangini and Kokinis at this point. But whether or not it makes sense to fans and scribes in March is immaterial. The bottom line is, it has to lead to wins on Autumn Sundays, if not this year, then certainly next year.

As long as there is a method to the madness, I'm willing to give it a chance. In eras past, we placed our hope in a long line of leaders who we thought had a grand plan, only to find out that Carmen Policy was a glorified mouthpiece, Butch Davis had paranoia issues and Phil Savage was out of his element as an administrator.

Maybe Mangini, Kokinis and their offbeat 2+0+1 equation is exactly what the doctor ordered. It certainly can't be worse than anything presented to us by Policy, Davis or Savage, right? Right?

All eyes on 65

Rules are made to be broken, history is created to be rewritten at a later date. But as we watch the Cavaliers stride down the home stretch of what has been to this point a magic carpet ride of a season, we can keep our eyes on one near-certainty that has been proven time and again in the NBA:

Teams that win 65 games during the regular season almost always win the NBA title. And the Cavs are currently on a 66-win pace, nudging very close to a 67-win pace. Another week of wins could have them on a solid 67-win pace.

The list of 65-win teams in NBA history reads like a who's-who of basketball: Michael Jordan's Bulls won a league record 72 in 1995-96 and followed that up with 69-win effort in 1996-97. Jordan's Bulls also won 67 in 1991-92.

Larry Bird's Celtics won 67 in 1985-86, nearly matched by last season's Celtics of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, who won 66. The Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant-led Lakers of 1999-2000 won 67. Magic Johnson's Lakers won 65 in 1986-87. Wilt Chamberlain's 76ers won 68 in 1966-67. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Bucks won 66 in 1970-71. The Lakers of Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West won 69 in 1971-72 and were largely regarded as the greatest single-season team of all time until the '95-'96 Bulls.

All of those teams won the NBA title. Finding a 65-win team that didn't win the NBA title is a needle-meets-haystack proposition. The 1972-73 Celtics won 68, but lost to the eventual NBA champion Knicks in the conference finals. The Dallas Mavericks won 67 in 2006-07 and managed to get bumped out of the playoffs in the first round by the Warriors, who were coached by Don Nelson, the man who installed the Mavericks' offense in the late '90s. It's hard to fight your shadow and win.

The 65-win mark isn't an arbitrary number pulled from a fishbowl. There are a number of 64-win teams that didn't win the NBA title, including the 1995-96 Sonics and the 1996-97 Jazz, both of whom fell victim to Jordan's Bulls in the Finals. The 2005-06 Pistons won a franchise-record 64 games, but lost in the conference finals. The Spurs won a franchise-record 63 in 2005-06, but lost a hotly-contested seven-game series to the Mavericks in the conference semifinals.

There are certainly many years in which teams with fewer than 65 wins walk off into the sunset with world championship hardware. But reaching the 65-win plateau seems to mark a dramatic increase in a team's chances of winning the title.

Of course, many of the championship teams listed above were the undisputed alpha dogs of the NBA in their title-winning years. It's much easier to win the whole ball of wax when you have the rest of the league on a string. This year, 65 wins won't even get the Cavs undisputed alpha dog status. Both the Cavs and Lakers stand strong chances of winning 65. It would make for an epic NBA Finals showdown, but it would also mean that some team is getting added to the short list of 65-game winners that didn't win the NBA title.

But if the Cavs can simply outpace the Lakers and finish with a better record, the Lakers' final win total might not matter. Reaching the 65-win plateau is a sign of a team's ability to dominate for long stretches, but the correlation between 65-win seasons and championships is rooted in something more cause-and-effect: Homecourt advantage.

If you win 65, you probably have clinched the best record in the league in most years. If you have the best record in the league, that means homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs. Having Games 5 and 7 of conference playoff series and Games 6 and 7 of the NBA Finals on your home turf can do wonders for swinging a series in your favor.

Homecourt advantage is more valuable to the Cavs than any other team. Not so much because the Cavs are less capable of winning road playoff games than other contenders, but because Quicken Loans Arena has been the Cavs' ace in the hole this season. They're 32-1 at The Q entering play Wendesday.

There is a good chance the Cavs will go as far as homecourt advantage takes them. In a season during which the first overall seed has been hotly contested among four potential 60-win teams, that is the significance of reaching the 65-win mark for the Cavs.

To the victor goes the spoils. The spoils, in this case, is the right to host Game 7.

To rebuild or not?

There was a point in time, from the 2007 draft to roughly mid-2008, when former Browns GM Phil Savage was lauded around town as the anti-Mark Shapiro/anti-Danny Ferry.

While the general managers of the Indians and Cavaliers played it close to the vest with trades and free agent signings, laboring under the supposed pretense that no move was better than an overly risky move, Savage was a riverboat gambler. He had cap space, he had the deep pockets of Randy Lerner, and he wasn't afraid to use them.

Savage became known around Cleveland as the GM who would bring a free agent to town and not let him leave Berea without a contract. That's how he landed Eric Steinbach and Joe Jurevicius. Both of those marquee signings helped the Browns seemingly turn their fortunes around with a 10-6 season in '07.

That following winter and spring, Savage used the same aggressive approach to try and improve the defense, trading away the team's '08 second round pick to the Packers for defensive lineman Corey Williams, and dealing their '08 third-rounder plus Leigh Bodden to the Lions for Shaun Rogers. The latter trade occurred after a trade that would have sent Rogers to Cincinnati fell through at the last minute. It was a headline-grabbing example of Savage's opportunism.

If you looked hard enough, you could certainly find critics, those who cautioned us that pawning off draft picks like Monopoly money is generally bad business in sports (see Stepien, Ted). But most of us were as lightheaded as bobby-soxers at a post-World War II Frank Sinatra concert. A Cleveland GM? Aggressively trying to improve his team? Yes, please.

Fast forward to March 2009. The Browns are coming off a 4-12 season. The names of Savage and Romeo Crennel have been relegated to the team's history books. George Kokinis and Eric Mangini have replaced them, and distance has offered some perspective on Savage, Crennel and the jobs that Mangini and Kokinis have before them as they drop the engine and become the latest tandem of mechanics to attempt repairs to the Browns roster.

The overarching question facing Mangini and Kokinis: Is the Browns roster in need of a rebuild?

According to media reports, Mangini felt he could win with much of the current roster intact. It was allegedly one of his main selling points to Lerner when he interviewed for the head coaching job. Scott Pioli's reported desire to scrap the Browns' roster and begin anew might be the biggest reason why he is now the main football operations man in Kansas City and not Cleveland.

But anyone can say anything to land a job, and Mangini, for all his built-in-Belichick's-image secrecy, probably did a great job of selling Lerner on the idea that the Browns have a talent to win, but they need the right coach and front office to facilitate winning. Likely followed by a smile and thumbs-up reminiscent of "Bob" from the ubiquitous Enzyte TV commercials.

When Mangini arrived on the job and finally brought aboard his right-hand man in Kokinis, their opinions on what to do with the Browns roster might have started to change. If it hasn't, circumstances might force their collective hand. The Browns roster is not as healthy as we might want to believe.

In retrospect, many of Savage's most praised moves from the past two years now look like the work of a GM who was playing for the immediate future, a GM who was unsure of whether he was going to retain his job if he didn't start winning right away. It's great to expedite the rebuilding process when you can, but in 2007 and '08, Savage simply did not care about the fallout his moves might cause in 2009 and '10.

Savage's thinking was probably something like this: If he could put a winner on the field in '07 and '08, it would buy him more time to figure out what to do when age, injuries and the salary cap brought the piper to town looking for his pay. If he failed, he'd be fired, and the mess would be someone else's to clean up. The second scenario became reality in January.

Now it is, in fact, time to pay the piper for the short-term moves of Savage, and Mangini and Kokinis have some difficult decisions to mull over.

They've already started, trading away Kellen Winslow -- a player Savage inherited from Butch Davis. Winslow likely would have been dealt no matter who had been running the team. Winslow had simply worn out his welcome in Cleveland. Winslow wasn't a Savage move, but it marked the beginning of the deconstruction of the Savage roster -- or at least the problem areas therein.

Since then, notable cuts have included Joe Jurevicius, an extremely popular local boy who is now a 30-something possession receiver coming off seven knee operations, due to post-surgical staph infections. Kevin Shaffer, a major offensive line free agent signing three years ago, was also cut. Both were cut, in part, to avoid a combined roster bonus of $1.25 million. The payment of roster bonuses is a major drawback of trying to reorganize an NFL roster filled with expensive free agent signings. It inevitably leads to cuts if a team is looking to save money.

That's before we even broach the subject of Shaun Rogers, who last month asked for a trade or release because either A) his feelings were hurt because Mangini didn't greet him on several occasions, B) his feelings were hurt because Browns officials asked him to come to camp in shape and not pushing 400 pounds, or C) he saw the fat contract awarded to Albert Haynesworth by the Washington Redskins, and wants a piece of that action.

Now, Mangini and Kokinis have another curious case to deal with in Donte Stallworth, who reportedly struck and killed a pedestrian while driving in Miami on Saturday. Charges hadn't been filed against Stallworth as of Saturday night, but if blood-alcohol tests find that he was over the legal alcohol limit in Florida, it instantly becomes an imprisonable offense upon conviction.

Keep in mind that Stallworth inked a seven-year, $35 million contract with the Browns a year ago. About $10 million of that is guaranteed. There is a chance that Stallworth's deal could be voided if he is charged and convicted, and those circumstances violate his contract. But regardless of the outcome, it's another sideshow the Browns don't need, and more money they don't need to pay out for little or no production.

Losing Stallworth might be viewed as a positive by many fans, but it would also deprive the Browns of their supposed No. 2 receiver and create serious depth problems at the position when combined with the losses of Jurevicius and Winslow. Mangini and Kokinis might be forced to draft a receiver they weren't otherwise planning to draft.

That's on top of glaring needs at linebacker, in the secondary, on the right side of the offensive line, the lack of a true pass rusher, and the knowledge that Jamal Lewis is running on fumes, necessitating the acquisition of a feature running back within the next two offseasons.

Put it all together, and the new Browns regime is not in an enviable position. Perhaps they're doing all they can at the moment -- purging the sideshows, bringing in some solid-if-unspectacular help through Mangini's Jets connections, and preparing for the draft. The last item is the most important on the checklist.

In the NFL, team building is all about the draft, and successful drafting is the only way a team achieves what the Patriots and Steelers have achieved this decade. There is no way around it.

Savage tried to find a way around it. He left Mangini and Kokinis with a roster full of Band-Aids, short-term fixes designed to save the jobs of Savage and Crennel, but never designed to promote a long term winning culture. And in the end, that's exactly what Savage received for his efforts -- a quick-fix 10-6 season that saved his job for the immediate future, followed by a cold splash of reality as his team crumbled around him one year later.

That reality is what Eric Mangini and George Kokinis are dealing with presently.

Cavs: Lucky and good

If the Cavaliers win the NBA title this June, and newly-signed forward Joe Smith plays an important role in breaking Cleveland's 45-year title drought, we might have to revise our whole perception of Cleveland sports.

Those of us under the age of 40 have been raised to believe that random good luck simply does not happen to Cleveland sports teams. Sure, the ping-pong balls of the 2003 NBA draft lottery delivered LeBron James to us, but it took a 17-65 season to tie the Nuggets for the highest number of ping-pong balls in the NBA's lottery machine that year.

Former GM Jim Paxson put a lot of work into making the Cavs bad enough to have a shot at LeBron, and believe it or not, much of it was by design as he pawned off Lamond Murray, Wesley Person and Andre Miller in salary dumps. In short, landing LeBron was ultimately a game of chance, but the pre-lottery maneuvering was far from an uncalculated move on the part of the Cavs.

Fast-forward five and a half years, and LeBron has formed the backbone of an elite team. It was a bumpy road at times, as LeBron pulled the team to their first NBA Finals berth in 2007, only to have the team imploded and rebuilt midway through the following season, as GM Danny Ferry assessed his team and came to the accurate conclusion that, as constructed prior to the 2008 trade deadline, the team couldn't win an NBA title.

We know the story by now. Ferry jettisoned nearly half the roster in a transformational three-way trade with Chicago and Seattle. Among the players acquired was Smith, a veteran forward known to history as the player who never really lived up to the billing of the No. 1 pick of the 1995 NBA draft, but a player known in NBA locker rooms and front offices as a hard worker and excellent teammate.

While Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Ben Wallace nursed bad backs through last year's playoffs, it was Smith who stepped up against the Wizards and Celtics, becoming arguably the Cavs' most reliable big man. He helped give the Cavs a puncher's chance against the Celtics juggernaut, but the upset big came up about two minutes too short in Game 7, and the Cavs' season ended on a cloudy day in May.

From that point, Smith moved into the final year of his deal and went from valuable bench contributor to valuable expiring contract. When Ferry had the chance to add a frontline starting point guard in Mo Williams, he reluctantly parted with Smith as part of the three-way trade, sending him to the Oklahoma City Thunder. It was the only real drawback to what was otherwise a heist of a trade for the Cavs.

The absence of Smith hasn't prevented the Cavs from attaining the best record in the Eastern Conference and securing a playoff berth more than two weeks before the vernal equinox, but the consensus among the fans and media (and we'd assume the big thinkers in the Cavs front office) was that the Cavs lacked veteran big man depth. Rookies J.J. Hickson and Darnell Jackson have showed promise, but playing unpolished rookies big minutes in the playoffs is a fool's bet.

Having traded Smith after July 1 of last year, the Cavs couldn't reacquire Smith via trade during this season per NBA rules. But the idea of reacquiring Smith via a buyout was likely always in the back of Ferry's mind.

This is where the random luck comes in, because there were so many ways in which the reunion of Smith and the Cavs could have been thwarted. Yet the pieces, many of which weren't under the control of Ferry or the Cavs, still fell into place.

Here is some of what it took to bring Smith back to Cleveland:

Ferry stood pat at the trade deadline.

Obviously, this was under Ferry's control. Ferry could have made a trade prior to the NBA trade deadline, using Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract to add a major piece. But in the end, Ferry decided he didn't want to alter the roster to that degree.

After watching Shaq storm through Florida like General Sherman marching to the sea this past week, running smack on Stan Van Gundy and Dwight Howard in Orlando and giving Dwyane Wade the full Kobe Bryant treatment in Miami, it almost makes you glad that Ferry passed on the chance to bring Shaq and his perpetual sideshows aboard. Almost.

Tyson Chandler's ankle didn't pass a physical.

On Feb. 17, the Hornets sent Chandler to the Thunder in exchange for Smith and Chris Wilcox. But the Thunder's bigwigs didn't like what they saw when their doctors examined Chandler's ankle, and the trade was rescinded on Feb. 18, sending Smith and Wilcox back to Oklahoma City.

A buyout wouldn't have happened with the Hornets, a playoff team that was looking for veteran frontcourt help. But thanks to Chandler's bum ankle and the Thunder's skittish reaction to it, Smith was returned to the bottom-feeding Thunder and the buyout speculation could resume.

Danny Ainge might have panicked.

Think NBA GMs are always cool, calculating life forms who never feel any pressure from outside sources? Celtics head of basketball operations Danny Ainge is here to dispel that myth right now.

After months and months of hearing media members across New England and the nation talk repeately about how the Celtics needed more bench depth the way a man stranded in the Sahara needs water, Ainge seemed to get a bit hasty in the days after the trade deadline.

Saddled with no real tradeable assets, Ainge needed to add pieces via free agency. If Ainge had waited until March 1, Smith could have been a very real possibility for the Celtics. The Celtics have the hardware to prove that they can give an aging veteran a legitimate shot at a ring. The Celtics also have Kevin Garnett, a close friend of Smith's dating to their days with the Timberwolves. Both of those facts could have trumped the Cavs' ability to offer a couple million more in salary.

But lucky for the Cavs, Ainge didn't wait on Smith. He quickly snatched up Mikki Moore and Stephon Marbury. Moore is a seven-footer and has a reputation as a pest, but his skill set is more limited than Smith's. Marbury hadn't played in an NBA game since last season, and even at his best, he usually needs a lot of playing time, touches and shots to make an impact.

It would appear that at this point, Smith has more ability than Moore or Marbury to add quality depth to a contender's bench. Ainge might very well have gone with the quickest fix instead of the best choice, and Ferry's team might now reap the benefits of Ainge's decision.

Ben Wallace broke his leg.

How is this a stroke of good luck? It's doubtful Smith, at 33 and with some gas left in the tank, would have joined a contender to play the role of window dressing. Like any veteran player, he wanted to be put to work.

The prospect of joining the Cavs to fight with J.J. Hickson for minutes behind Ilgauskas, Wallace and Anderson Varejao probably wouldn't have appealed to him. But with Wallace on the shelf for the next few weeks, Smith knew he'd have a chance to come to the Cavs and draw significant minutes right away.

If Wallace can return to the starting lineup before the end of the regular season with no ill effects from his injury, it might have been the best kind of bad break a team can hope for.

The Cavs have laid the groundwork with their play.

In years past, it was the Lakers, Celtics, Spurs and Pistons snatching up the veteran players looking for a shot at a ring. Six years ago, the Lakers grabbed Karl Malone and Gary Payton at cut-rate prices. The Celtics snagged James Posey, P.J. Brown and Sam Cassell for pennies on the dollar last year, and all played significant roles in returning Boston to the top of the NBA.

The Cavs just didn't have that kind of reputation. But now Smith's return might have changed some of that. The Cavs have played so well this year, a veteran player like Smith is willing to come here during the middle of the season, of his own accord, to try to win a title here.

Maybe playing here a year ago helped increase Smith's comfort level with returning, but the bottom line is he wouldn't have agreed to come back to Cleveland if he didn't think the Cavs offered him a real shot at a title.

You have to win in order to lure players who can help you win. And now, thanks to some random luck, some foresight from Ferry and elite-level play from the Cavs all season, they have another player who can help them win.