LeBron is still learning

The 2008-09 season was hailed as LeBron James' coming-of-age party. The season in which he stopped climbing Mount Greatness and reached its lofty summit.

It was the coronation foretold since LeBron's formative years winning state titles at Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary High School. And in one sense, it happened. LeBron won the NBA's Most Valuable Player Award in his sixth season, at the age of 24. As the Cavs cruised to a franchise record 66 wins, LeBron was an all-around force, adding top-flight defense and a penchant for chasedown blocks to his already-superlative arsenal.

Kobe Bryant could be the game's best finisher. Dwight Howard could be the Defensive Player of the Year. This year, LeBron was the game's best player, period. The boy-turned-man demonstrated no discernible weaknesses through 82 regular season games and two playoff sweeps.

Perhaps, then, it was inevitable that the law of averages was going to catch up to the boy-turned-man and make him look more like a 24-year-old man-child. We just didn't expect to happen so suddenly and all against one team.

In eliminating the Cavs in six games in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Magic brought out the worst in LeBron in a couple of different ways. In the process, they showed Cleveland and the rest of the country that maybe LeBron isn't as finished of a product as we'd like to believe.

Four years in college would have made LeBron a second-year pro this season. And, at times, that is what he looked like against Orlando.

Prior to storming off the court in a huff and failing to show for the postgame press conference following Game 6, LeBron got something of a free pass from many fans and members of the media. LeBron was carrying the team, we said. He's doing all that should be asked of him and more. It's his teammates and coach who are letting him down. It's the Cavs organization that let him down. Cue the LeBron-to-New York speculation anew.

That's why it was something of a perspective-altering blessing in disguise when LeBron gave the Orlando Magic the cold shoulder and didn't move his lips again until he stepped onto the team bus. LeBron's bout with post-elimination pouting helped remove his Teflon coating, revealing a side to LeBron that we seldom see. An imperfect LeBron, not as mature as we'd like to believe -- perhaps not as much of a leader as we'd like to believe. Not yet, anyway.

LeBron, for all the progress he's made between his rookie year and now, all of the sanding and polishing his game has undergone, his uncanny ability to meet and surpass the expectations placed on him as the most-hyped young athlete in history, has still not arrived at his full potential. At the age of 24, who really has?

LeBron, quite simply, did not lead adequately against Orlando. He rose to the occasion himself, but he didn't spur his teammates to do the same. Accountability from LeBron might not have been able to get Mo Williams' jumper to fall. LeBron's leadership wouldn't have made Delonte West tall enough to guard Hedo Turkoglu, or Zydrunas Ilgauskas fast enough to not look athletically overmatched by Dwight Howard. But what it would have done is put the ball in their hands, in a very real way.

Mike Brown has taken the majority of the heat for the LeBron-on-five offense that repeatedly reared its ugly head late in games throughout the series. Brown seemed to actually encourage LeBron to take the ball and plow into the teeth of the Orlando defense. No doubt, this was far from Brown's best performance as a head coach. But as counterintuative as it seems, Brown is looking for his cue from LeBron, who is asked to lead the whole team -- players and coaches alike.

It goes back to the idea that if LeBron, for some reason, ever wanted Brown fired, Brown would find boxes in his office approximately five seconds after LeBron's decree. That's simply a fact of life when one person means so much to the welfare of an organization. What LeBron wants, LeBron gets.

With that type of power comes the corresponding responsibility to lead -- even at the age of 24. That means despite his young age, LeBron has to make veteran decisions. To his substantial credit, he's hit for a very high average in the decision-making department through the first six years of his career. But against the Magic, in this series, LeBron just didn't make a lot of good decisions.

At this point in his career, LeBron isn't at all unlike a young CEO. The young CEO starts his own company -- or in LeBron's case, turns around a faltering organization -- by doing things his way. He gets used to having his hand on all the buttons, having a hand in all the tasks. But the organization grows. Expectations increase. The way the CEO does business needs to change. Change is easy when you're winning. But when the road gets muddy, it's easy to revert back to old habits.

That's what happened against the Magic. LeBron doesn't yet seem to grasp the idea that a leader's job isn't to strap his team to his back, perform all the jobs, compensate for every weakness and try to make everything all better. That's how one guy averages 40 points a game while the effect of everyone else is negligible. That's also how you lose a playoff series in six games.

There is certainly a time and place for LeBron to take a game over. But the entire second half isn't it. Those are the times when LeBron should be getting in his teammates' ears and demanding more of them. Maybe LeBron can't get Mo's shots to start falling, but he can make sure Mo is busting his tail on the defense end, and that he is taking every opportunity to use his quickness to penetrate and draw fouls.

Maybe LeBron can't make Z, Ben Wallace and Anderson Varejao match up better with Howard, but he can let it be known in no uncertain terms that letting all 6'-11" of Howard sneak back door and throw down an alley-oop dunk is unacceptable.

LeBron can defer to Mo and Delonte in setting up the offense, instead of taking the ball up top and dribbling down the shot clock while everyone stays parked on the wings waiting for a kickout. LeBron needs to recognize that Mo and Delonte aren't catch-and-shoot gunners. They need to handle the ball and set up the offense in order to stay in the flow of the game. It's the approach that worked all season, but it disappeared for long stretches against Orlando.

Maybe all of it wouldn't have beaten Orlando, a team that simply had a series for the ages shooting the ball. But it is a blatant falsehood to say that LeBron stuffed the stat sheet and therefore has no blood on his hands in this series loss. If anything, LeBron helped lose this series because he singlehandedly stuffed the stat sheet.

The Cavs had great chemistry all season long. The Cavs' closeness was so uncommon among professional sports teams, it drew national attention. LeBron was a facilitator of that, and that's great so long as the wins keep coming and the sailing remains smooth. But sooner or later, a team like Orlando will come along and pose a serious challenge, and the leader will need to stop being a bud and start being a boss.

LeBron will need to start making good decisions at critical times, and start demanding that his teammates make good decisions. And it won't matter if that list of teammates includes Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire or anyone else, because those players will take their cues from LeBron. If LeBron dribbles down the shot clock and kills the flow of the offense, the caliber of his teammates won't matter. They'll be standing around like every other teammate LeBron has had.

The bottom line: We know LeBron's teammates respect him as an equal, but can he get them to respect him as a superior? Can he even sprinkle in a little fear when necessary? That's the real question about LeBron that needs to be answered in the next 12 months.

Once again, LeBron is asked to grow up fast. Now that he's tasted real, bitter playoff defeat in each of the last two seasons, the stakes have been raised. Unless he wants to keep tasting springtime defeat, this is an aspect of greatness that he needs to master, and soon.

Cavs post-mortem

Let's set one record straight before I delve into the circumstances that ended the Cavaliers season on Saturday night: The Cavs did not choke, at least according to how I define choking in sports.

I define a choke in one of two ways: Either a team gains control of a series and suddenly falls apart, or a team simply tanks and falls to team to which it had no business losing.

The Cavs' fate at the hands of the Magic falls under neither heading. They certainly did not have control of this series at any point, and based on the overall trend of the past six games, I'd say the Cavs very much had business losing to Orlando.

So what happened? Why is this Cavs team the latest on an extremely short list of NBA teams to cross the 65-win threshold and not even make it to the NBA Finals? Before you knee-jerk "Because it's Cleveland" out of your mouth, let's take a look at things a little more rationally.

1. Teamwork augments talent, it doesn't compensate for it

All season long, the Cavs were celebrated both locally and nationally for their tight locker room. In an era of millionaire athletes, millionaire egos and ESPN face time, the Cavs behaved more like a small-college team than a filthy-rich NBA squad piloted by one of the most famous people on the planet. They hung out with each other on their free time. They made fake TV commercials together. They all showed up in Akron for LeBron's MVP press conference.

All season long, we banked on the idea that the Cavs' tremendous team chemistry would carry them past more-talented, but perhaps less-unified, teams like the Lakers and Celtics (and as it turns out, the Magic).

The trouble with that theory is the more-talented teams have to perform below their potential for the less-talented team to catch up. The more-talented teams have to be marred by infighting and selfish play in order for the less-talented team to make up the ground with their teamwork.

Against Orlando, the Cavs ran into a more-talented, taller and more athletic roster performing at an optimum level. When the approach that had worked all year started to not work for the Cavs, they panicked, and the entire offense regressed to LeBron-on-five.

2. The problem with those 66 wins

No team can really boast that it has the roster of a 66-win team. It is a rare enough feat to reach 66 regular season wins that, with any team that does so, some amount of overachieving is involved.

But if you take off the wine-colored glasses, you might see that how this Cavs team arrived at 66 wins involves a tremendous amount of overachieving. Namely, two factors that you simply cannot count on from year to year.

First, the Cavs defended their home court with just one honest slip-up in February against the Lakers. A full-strength effort in the season finale against Philadelphia ensures a record-tying 40-1 home record. As it stands, they finished 39-2.

Second, and perhaps even more glaringly, the Cavs absolutely owned the Western Conference this season. They finished 26-4 against the opposite conference, with only three road losses at the Lakers, Rockets and Hornets. They went on two West Coast jaunts, and though they had close calls against the Clippers, Warriors and Kings, they still managed to emerge with just that lonely loss against L.A.'s varsity team.

That is a fluke, plain and simple. Jet lag and general road weariness get to even the best NBA teams on long road trips. This season, it didn't. Next season, the Cavs will almost certainly lose more road games against the West. If they do, combined with a few extra home losses, that's the difference between 66 wins and 57 or 58 wins, which is probably more in line with the current roster's talent level. And if that happens, we're not looking at a playoff loss to a 59-win Magic team in the same way we are right now.

The Cavs were exceptionally good at beating up on the lesser 90 percent of the league this year. They had very few slip-ups against lesser competition, which helped cushion the blows landed by the Lakers, Magic and Celtics (combined 3-6 record). But in the end, what the Cavs' record says is that they were really good at winning the games they should have won. But against teams that had a legitimate chance of beating them? Different story.

3. The Cavs might have peaked early in the season

It's tough to really say that about a team that racked up wins from start to finish, but the Cavs most resembled a juggernaut early in the season, when they piled winning streak on top of winning streak. LeBron first emerged as an MVP-level force, Mo Williams and Delonte West looked like an elite backcourt, Zydrunas Ilgauskas was stroking shots out to three-point range and even Ben Wallace had a spring in his step.

But Z hurt his ankle in December and his already-limited mobility suffered even further. Daniel Gibson's string of injuries slowly led us to the conclusion that he was bound for a down year. West broke his wrist, and even though it was his non-shooting wrist, his jumper was inconsistent for the rest of the season. Ben Wallace broke his leg, was replaced by Anderson Varejao in the starting lineup, and has now officially reached has-been status.

Though the wins kept coming, the potency of the Cavs roster as a whole really slid downhill as the season progressed. It didn't prevent them from sweeping the Pistons and Hawks out of the playoffs, but when they faced a top-shelf team, the sagging spots on the roster were exposed and exploited.

4. Too short, too old

When first presented with the idea of running with a starting backcourt of Williams and West, Mike Brown was reportedly slow to warm. It took some convincing from Danny Ferry before Brown would put the 6'-1" Williams and 6'-3" West in the same backcourt. Brown apparently felt that with the lack of height, the Cavs would be at a matchup disadvantage on too many nights.

In the frontcourt, Z, Wallace and Joe Smith continued to succumb to Father Time while Andy's offensive skills and defensive girth remained limited. These are problems that no amount of coaching and strategizing can overcome.

It took seven months, but eventually the chickens came home to roost. The tall, athletic Magic roster posed the Cavs with a number of large matchup problems for which they had no real answer. The Lakers would have posed many of the same challenges.

There is no real way around it: The Cavs' backcourt is very small by NBA standards, and their big men are extremely limited in terms of skill and athleticism.

Based on their performances over most of the season, Williams and West are a worthy starting backcourt for an NBA contender, even with a lack of size. But an undersized starting backcourt creates a need for size and skill in other areas of the roster.

The Cavs can get away with an undersized backcourt if they would have an all-star caliber power forward or center who could have effectively guarded Dwight Howard one-on-one, or posted up Rashard Lewis, Orlando's rail-thin sniper of a power forward.

The Cavs can get away with a small starting backcourt if they could go to a skilled 6'-6" or 6'-7" swingman off the bench, much like Orlando has in Mickael Pietrus. Aging Wally Szczerbiak and perpetual project player Sasha Pavlovic don't cut it.

Williams and West should be the kind of players who can hurt another team when flying under the radar, when the opponent is more concerned with stopping the frontline players on the roster. Instead, Williams and West are LeBron's primary wingmen. the second and third-best players on the roster. As much as I like what Williams and West bring to the table, they're miscast as top lieutenants on a championship-level team.

5. Mike Brown needs to look in the mirror

Brown deserves the NBA Coach of the Year Award he received. He did a great job with this team for most of the year. But he fell back into some bad habits against the Magic, habits that didn't exactly make him a rock in stormy seas.

Once again, Brown started to shuffle his rotations like a blackjack dealer. He needed to find a lineup that worked, but flip-flopping among Gibson, Pavlovic and Szczerbiak coming off the bench, stapling Joe Smith to the bench while playing Wallace more minutes, none of it had a settling effect on a Cavs team that was already skittish after blowing huge leads in the first two games.

Brown accepted mismatches, like West on 6'-10" Hedo Turkoglu, for way too long. He let Varejao guard the bigger and faster Dwight Howard at the outset of overtime in Game 4, surrendering three critical buckets in the process. Brown also seemed to encourage LeBron to play one-on-five late in games. Yes, you want the ball in the hands of your superstar at critical moments. But you also have to run plays and get open shots.

Telling LeBron "Take us home, big guy" for an entire quarter isn't an offensive strategy. It's crossing your fingers. LeBron is an amazing player, capable of singlehandedly winning games, but Brown still has to do more coaching than that.

Stan Van Gundy, for all the cracks he receives about his weight and resemblance to Ron Jeremy, coached circles around Brown for large stretches of this series.

A shot at redemption

It was, quite literally, a cry of anguish.

Hedo Turkoglu, Orlando's starting small forward and the best clutch shooter Turkey has ever produced, had just finished off a possession that summed up Orlando's entire Game 2. He stalked the Cavs. He worked the perimeter. He probed, he prodded, he toyed with Sasha Pavlovic. The seconds slid off the clock with all the speed of cold tar.

Finally, Turkoglu made his move. He put a step on Pavlovic, drove to his left, into the lane, and when the thicket of white Cleveland jerseys became too dense, he pulled up, stretched out his 6'-10" frame and fired a 12-footer at the rim.

Bingo. As if there was any doubt. 95-93, Magic, with one second left.

Myself and fellow TheClevelandFan.com writer John Hnat had been holding a two-man watch party at Buffalo Wild Wings in Rocky River, one of many we have have held this season. We've seen a lot of wins, a few losses, but nothing quite like this.

OK, actually we did. It was Game 1 Wednesday night, at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Strongsville. Rashard Lewis was the villain that night. In the final seconds of that game, everyone in the house felt the cold steel of Lewis' last-second dagger, and the cold reality of two missed chances to win afterward. But the popular mood following that game was one of clenched teeth, not despair.

Friday night, it was different. An 0-2 hole meant the death of dreams. It meant "I probably won't tune in to watch Game 3, start to finish." It meant pinning all your hopes on the miniscule chance that the Cavs could shake off back-to-back home losses and somehow win two in Orlando, where they've only won one time in three years.

That's why, when Turkoglu's shot slipped smoothly through the net with "1.0" showing on the clock, people let out a collective shriek. Not a groan, not a yelp, a shriek of actual pain. The shriek of a desperate fan base that had passionately clung to the idea that this was the team that would finally give us the experience of winning a world championship, now smarting and trying every bit as desperately to pull back, to pack up their emotional belongings and get out of Loudville.

People started filing out of the restaurant with something like catatonic smirks plastered on their faces. On the TV screens, the Cavs huddled during their final timeout. You couldn't think that there was a ton to discuss in that huddle. There is one second left. There is no time for a play to develop. The ball is going to LeBron. Option one, get it to him cutting to basket and go for the tie. Option two, get it to him up top and hope he clears enough space to squeeze off a high, arching prayer.

John, who frequently texts during breaks in the action, received a message on his phone from frequent TCF forum poster Tom Oktavec (who some of you might know by the screen name "Hi Oktane"). Chalk it up to a hunch or sheer bravado, but Babe Ruth never pointed to the outfield fence with more defiance.

"LeBron is winning this game right now. Book it."

Restaurant patrons continued to gravitate toward the exit as the Cavs took their inbound formation. Mo Williams to trigger on the sideline. LeBron straddling the free throw line. Turkoglu charged with preventing a back-door cut and an alley-oop.

Mo took the ball from the ref, the whistle blew, and the five-second inbounds clock started. It took about a millisecond to realize that the Magic were wary of the alley-oop to tie, and weren't going to let LeBron get to the hoop and airborne without encountering three-to-five blue jerseys along the way.

That's when LeBron, as all great players do at some point, made a great play that led to a greater play.

Instantly recognizing that the Magic were going to defend the inside shot, LeBron stutter-stepped a few times, then made a hard fake to the basket. Turkoglu didn't really bite on it, but he hesitated long enough for LeBron to use his unprecedented quickness to scoot out beyond the arc and take the inbounds pass from Williams.

One second was all the clock had to give. LeBron didn't even need that much time. In the span of four-tenths of a second, he squared his shoulders, got himself in the air and launched the shot before Turkoglu or any other Orlando defender could put a hand in his face.

Williams said the ball hung in the air long enough for him to say a prayer. For those of us watching on TV, we probably could have said the entire Rosary. One Hail Mary for Red Right 88, one Hail Mary for The Drive, one for The Fumble, one for The Shot and one for Game 7 of the '97 World Series.

The red lights illuminated the backboard frame. The clock showed "0.0" The ball came down, deflected off the inside of the rim, caromed off the other side and settled through the net.

Bedlam. Salvation. Strangers high-fiving one another. A wall of sound that would drown out any wails of anguish. LeBron made it so, with the biggest shot of his career to date.

LeBron didn't win the series yet. But he won the series back. He won us back. He stopped the people who were filing out of restaurants around the Cleveland area, the fans who were trudging to the exits at The Q, and made them turn around. In the span of one second, he made us believe again. If nothing else, he made us once again believe that, as long as he is on the floor, a happy ending is always possible. For a fan base as cynical as Cleveland's, sometimes maintaining belief is more than half the battle.

Postgame, TNT's broadcast crew immediately began making comparisons between LeBron's shot, and Michael Jordan's shot that slayed the Cavs 20 years ago. But more than Jordan's shot, LeBron's winner reminded me of Christian Laettner's miracle over Kentucky in 1992. Mo Williams overcome with emotion like Thomas Hill, LeBron sprinting back up the floor like Laettner, the fans celebrating deep into the night like Cameron Crazies. The raw exuberance of the celebration both on and off the court was every bit March Madness as it was NBA Playoffs.

And just like the NCAA Tournament, we get to do it all again two days later.

By the way, on the off chance that Tom is riding a Vegas hot streak, John asked him for his lucky lottery numbers:

His answer: "23, 23, 23, 23, 23 and 23."

Lessons from Game 1

We are 48 minutes into the Eastern Conference Finals, and so far, the Orlando Magic are as advertised.

In storming back to steal a 107-106 Game 1 win, Orlando lived up to its billing as a team capable of scoring in lethal waves, both inside and outside. In Game 1, the Magic looked every bit like the team that has given the Cavs matchup fits for several years running.

The good news from the Cleveland perspective is that they solidly outplayed Orlando for a entire half, and only once they got away from closing on Orlando's perimeter shooters did Orlando start to creep back into the game. In other words, the potential to beat Orlando is there. But the Cavs have to bring high defensive intensity for 48 minutes, every game, otherwise Orlando might binge-score them into submission.

On deck is Game 2, Friday night. It really is a must-win situation for the Cavs -- perhaps the first real must-win they've faced all year. They can't head to Florida down 0-2 and expect to have a realistic chance to take this series. As it is, they're now going to need to win one game in Orlando in this series.

Despite the fact that the Cavs have only won once in Orlando in three years, it's not outlandish to ask the Cavs to win once on the Magic's home floor. But to lose both games at home to start the series, forcing the need for two road wins just to tie the series, is really getting up close and personal with the 8-ball. It can be done, but in this matchup, I wouldn't count on it.

With all of that in mind, here are some lessons the Cavs should have learned from Game 1, and how they can use them to win Game 2 on Friday.

1. One nine-day layoff = good. Two nine-day layoffs in 25 days = bad.

It's a shame the Cavs were penalized for their efficient dismantling of the Hawks in the previous round. But that's exactly what happened on Wednesday, mostly notably to LeBron James, who was severely cramping due to dehydration after the game. Hopefully that's the only time you'll see LeBron that spent after a 48-minute regulation game.

It's apparent that the Cavs' conditioning lapsed a bit during this most recent layoff. The Magic, being about 20 times better than the Hawks, were able to exploit Cleveland's fatigue factor in the second half by making them work hard at both ends of the floor.

This is the rust factor that was probably unavoidable. Unfortunately, it was a contributing factor in why the Cavs now find themselves in a 1-0 hole. The Cavs ran some full-speed practices during their nine-day sabbatical, but for a veteran team that has been playing since October, rest was likely the priority over conditioning maintenance.

Now that the Cavs are back on a regular playing schedule, they should be able to shake off the rust and close the conditioning gap. But, man, the price they paid for that second nine-day layoff sure looks steep at the moment.

2. Dwight Howard can singlehandedly turn games into a jump-shooting contest.

Dwight Howard is the kind of player who makes you think. Especially if you're a perimeter player looking to put the ball on the floor.

For the Cavs, a team that relies on dribble-penetration as a key offensive element, Howard's penchant for stuffing ballhandlers at the rim is more than a little problematic. Already, it seems like Mo Williams and Delonte West would just as soon stop and pop, or even camp out on the wings for catch-and-shoot threes, than drive down low and risk Howard's wrath. When the Cavs' speedy guard duo settles for lower-percentage shots and not getting to the free-throw line, it decreases the Cavs' offensive effectiveness exponentially.

LeBron bucked that trend. He took it inside numerous times en route to his career playoff high 49 points, and predictably was met with stiff resistance when Howard was in the game. But it needed to be done. The Cavs need to take the ball at Howard. Sometimes he'll win, sometimes the Cavs will win. But to stay out of the paint is counterproductive.

Certainly, it's going to be embarrassing when Howard swats your shot away. It's going to be painful when you come into contact with his airplane wing of an arm, or crash into his 6'-11" body. But that's the only way to get Howard into foul trouble, and foul trouble is the only way the Cavs, with their not-all-that-athletic frontcourt, can really neutralize Howard.

3. Save something for the encore, LeBron.

Everyone in Cleveland loves a LeBron midair swat-job. He had one of those Wednesday night. Everyone loves one of his elbow-above-the-rim dunks. He had one of those, too. But in this meat grinder called the NBA playoffs, it might be time for LeBron to rein in the showmanship and concentrate on more basic blocking and tackling. He'll burn up enough energy chasing Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis around the perimeter. He'll encounter enough resistance trying to plow through Howard on his drives to the hoop.

Not even King James has a bottomless reservoir of energy, and it helps no one but the Magic if he is bouncing around like a pogo stick in the first half, only to be left limping and cramping in the fourth quarter.

Pace yourself, LeBron.

4. Do NOT let Orlando beat you three points at a time.

Mike Brown and his staff game-planned things right in the first half. This Orlando team is one of the best three-point shooting teams of all time. They are so good, they can use the three-point shot as a substantial part of their offensive attack because they can literally use it to shoot their way back into games.

The only antidote is to close out their shooters when they have the ball, and stay in their shirts when they don't have the ball. That requires energy and quick defensive rotations, something the Cavs mastered in the first half, when they built a 14-point lead going into halftime.

But then came the second half, and the Cavs inexplicably got away from the solid perimeter D that had build the first-half cushion. Part of it might have been fatigue, but part of it was a sudden urge to start double-teaming Howard in the post. Howard had a monster first half by most accounts, and it still didn't prevent Orlando from heading to the locker room down by double digits.

It was only when Turkoglu, Lewis, Mickael Pietrus and Rafer Alston got going from the perimeter that Orlando started to chip away at Cleveland's lead.

The moral of the story? If forced to make a choice, let Howard get his points, and stop the mad bombers from shooting the Magic to a win.

Orlando takes common basketball logic and turns it on its ear. Most of the time, a defense wants to take away the other team's highest-percentage shots, nearest to the basket. But Orlando is such a great three-point shooting team, it's usually better to let Howard and the bigs do their thing down low, since they can only hurt you two points at a time, and save the majority of your defensive scheming to stop the guys who can hurt you three points at a time.

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.