Go Steelers?

What defines a Browns fan in this day and age?

No secret, there isn't a whole heck of a lot on which to hang your hat.

You can re-live the glory days of the past, whether your frame of reference is Paul Brown as a football innovator, Jim Brown as an unstoppable rushing force, Brian Sipe and the Kardiac Kids or Bernie Kosar and those oh-so-close days of the late 1980s.

You can continue to examine the poorly-healed wound left by Art Modell's departure, seething with every morsel of success the Baltimore Ravens attain.

You can find solace in knowing the every other Browns fan has trudged through the past decade with you, following the sorry fortunes of this facsimile second franchise, bearers of an unrevived legacy.

You can do some of that. You can do all of that. But you still won't have reached the one true-essence common denominator that defines a 21st Century Browns fan. To do that, you have to hate the Steelers.

How can you not? Even if you didn't want to hate the Steelers, you don't really have much of a choice. Steelers fans, true-blue, bandwagon or otherwise, populate northeast Ohio in droves. The scourge from the southeast is without question a powerful football force in Browns country.

The Steelers are without a doubt the second-most-popular pro football team in the Cleveland area. And because they win all the time, their fans aren't bashful about flaunting their black and gold on shirts, jackets, hats, bumper stickers, flags, yard signs -- you name it.

Now, before the Sun has faded the "Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl XL Champions" bumper stickers applied to so many vehicles throughout the region several years ago, the Steelers will likely give their fans the chance to apply a "Super Bowl XLIII Champions" sticker right over the top. It's all about staying current, after all.

Browns fans? They might discreetly place a small orange helmet on the back window of their cars. They might have a t-shirt they wear once in a while, maybe a Tim Couch jersey bought during the ancient history of the Carmen Policy years. Maybe you break out the brown and orange on Autumn Sundays, but you probably don't wear it around town 365 days a year like Pittsburgh fans.

Steelers fans are proud. Browns fans want to be proud, but more and more, treat their football loyalty like something of a dirty little secret -- particularly if family gatherings involve Steeler fans. It's kind of like admitting that you sing along to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by "Wham!" in the shower. The embarrassment potential is unbearable.

If you're a Browns fan, then you are the fan of a perpetual loser of a team sharing space with the fans of a five-time, likely soon to be six-time, Super Bowl championship team that lives less than two hours away and has the fans in your neighborhood to prove it. Resentment is inevitable. Outright hatred is probable.

But should it be anymore? Should you view Steeler-hate as your civic duty as a Browns fan?

Over the past 40 years, the Steelers have been far more successful than the Browns. Since the new Browns franchise began play, the discrepancy has become even more pronounced. Head-to-head, the Browns have beaten the Steelers just three times since 1999, and are winless since 2003. Since then, the Browns have managed a fluke of a 10-6 season, three 4-win seasons and no playoff berths while Pittsburgh has multiple Super Bowl appearances.

It's almost as if the Steelers and Browns are playing in separate leagues. Their success is so incomprehensible to our frame of reference as Browns fans, it's almost ridiculous to get jealous. If the Steelers win their sixth Super Bowl, get angry at Bill Gates the next time he makes a couple billion, whenever that is.

If anything, you should welcome further success by the Steelers instead of resisting it. Resistance is futile, anyway, and it won't make the Browns any better.

Why should you do something as dastardly as not hate the Steelers with every fiber of your being? Because Randy Lerner and his minions du jour should see the damage they're doing to a once-great rivalry. The most powerful statement that can be handed to Browns management is a city slowly being taken over by the team next door, while the fans of the home team have their once-burning passion eroded into apathy, even something of a sense of respect for what the Steelers have accomplished over the past four decades.

It will be a dark day for Browns fans everywhere when we collectively pronounce the rivalry with the Steelers dead. But it's already on life support. The Steelers and their fans consider the Ravens their top rival in the division, and they're right. Those in the Browns organization don't even recognize the rivalry on their own, largely because every presidential election since 2000 has occurred with the Browns under new management.

The only group keeping the Browns-Steelers rivalry torch lit is Browns fans, and maybe we need to extinguish it as a symbolic marking of the divergent paths of the two franchises. It can always be re-lit at a later date, but the arrival of that date could be measured in geologic time.

Maybe those in charge of the Browns are dense and/or oblivious and/or incompetent enough to not realize what they're ruining. But as the Steelers ready themselves for a shot at one for the other thumb while the Browns continue to wallow in last place with quicksand for an organizational foundation, it's hard to not see the handwriting on the wall, even for Randy Lerner: The Steelers are now; the Browns are so 50 years ago.

Last week, the Browns lost another link to their past with the death of Dante Lavelli. But more links to the past are dying as well, as the losing seasons mount and the distance between the present and the glory days grows ever wider. Nothing seems capable of stopping the separation between the current Browns and everything that made this franchise meaningful in the 20th Century.

So let's call it what it is. Choke on the words, but spit them out: The Steelers are the good guys. They're a quality organization with good ownership and solid executives. They deserve success because they have earned it. The Browns are the bad guys. They're the team that ruins careers, is frequently marred by infighting, can't keep a leadership team in charge for more than four years and is killing what was once a great rivalry.

This coming Sunday, there is a good chance the chasm between the two teams will only widen.

Follow the leader

For much of the decade, the NBA's Western Conference was the alpha dog of professional basketball. If you wanted to find the NBA's best teams, you usually didn't have to look east of the Mississippi.

From 2000 to '07, the West won six of eight NBA titles, all by the Lakers or Spurs. The two times in that period that an East team did rise up and win an NBA title -- the Pistons in 2004 and the Heat in 2006 -- the basketball-watching public viewed it as a major upset.

But as the decade draws to a close, so is the West's dominance in the NBA's lead pack. The Lakers are there, the Spurs and Hornets are still really good, but the pinnacle of the NBA has a decidedly Eastern flavor this year.

The stage was set last year with the Celtics' NBA title. This season, the Cavaliers and Magic have formed the other two prongs of a three-way battle. All three teams are on pace for well over 60 wins. All three teams have occupied the top spot in the conference at some point this season.

It appears the trio of teams will engage in a neck-and-neck horse race for the conference's top seed, a race that will only grow more frenetic and confusing as the end of the season draws closer.

So what is the real scoop on these three contenders? Here is some food for thought on the Cavs, and how they match up against the East's other two elite squads.

Cleveland Cavaliers

What makes them dangerous to Boston and Orlando:

1. LeBron James. As if you didn't know. He's the best player in the conference, and no one else can change a game the way he can with his combination of size, speed, vision and smarts. A motivated LeBron is a threat to beat any team, anytime.

2. The Cavs are statistically the best defensive team in the league. They surrender the fewest points per game in the league and typically stifle opposing field goal percentages at a rate that is at or among the league's best defenses. Good defensive basketball generally trumps good offensive basketball in the playoffs.

3. They're 20-0 at home. If the Cavs get homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs, beating them will be one tall order for any team.

What makes them vulnerable:

1. A sometimes-stagnant offense. LeBron still has some bad habits in his system, among them a tendency to hold the ball too long, take bad shots and coast for stretches, and that can rub off on the rest of the team.

To his credit, LeBron has never coasted in a big game, but when he cradles the ball and constantly hoists 20-footers, he stalls the offense. Generally, it happens when LeBron tries to take over a game and play one-on-five. LBJ consciously knows he doesn't have to play the hero in every single game this year, but once in a while, his subconscious could use a refresher course.

2. Perimeter defense. Until Delonte West returns from a broken wrist, the Cavs will be without their best perimeter defender. Even with him, Boston and Orlando present matchup problems because Mike Brown's defensive game plans dictate that his players concentrate on taking away high percentage shots inside, then work their way out to defend the lower-percentage shots on the perimeter.

That is a good philosophy, except when the other team heats up from the perimeter. Boston's Ray Allen is among the best shooters in league history, though he's lost a step or five in recent years. Paul Pierce can put on prodigious shooting displays from downtown as well. But the real danger is in facing Orlando.

The Magic possess a couple of 6'-10" mad bombers in Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis. Jameer Nelson is no slouch from long distance, either. With a mostly-undersized backcourt, the Cavs (as currently constructed) would likely need to rely heavily on the shot-challenging capabilities of their taller wing players -- LeBron, Sasha Pavlovic and Wally Szczerbiak -- to prevent Orlando from conducting a three-point shooting clinic.

Odds are Orlando wouldn't be able to stay smoking hot from long distance for an entire playoff series. But they'll be able to do a lot of damage if their shooters get consistent open looks.

Myth about the Cavs: They don't have a lot of frontcourt depth.

Everywhere Mike Brown has turned this year, he's gotten production out of his big men. When Z went down with a broken foot, Anderson Varejao moved into the starting lineup and J.J. Hickson absorbed some minutes off the bench, with decent results. Darnell Jackson is a foul-committing machine, but can play effective minutes for short stretches. Even Lorenzen Wright got in on the act, starting a couple of games last week when Ben Wallace had the flu.

Orlando Magic

What makes them dangerous to Boston and Cleveland:

1. Mismatches. With 6'-10" Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis and 6'-9" Brian Cook capable of hitting shots from anywhere on the floor, your frontcourt defense is going to be taxed to the limit in facing the Magic. And that's before considering how you're going to stop Dwight Howard.

2. Stan Van Gundy. His striking resemblance to adult film star Ron Jeremy is a running joke, but beyond the "Hedgehog" references, Van Gundy is a damn good coach. Much like Mike Brown did in his first couple of years with the Cavs, Van Gundy has taken an offensive-minded team and gotten them to play fundamentally-sound defense. A Stan Van Gundy team will always be a well-prepared and well-coached team.

3. Dwight Howard. He averages 20 points, 14 rebounds and 3 blocks per game. He's a beast.

What makes them vulnerable:

1. A lack of size inside. Once you get past Howard, Orlando's inside presence consists of Tony Battie and Adonal Foyle, with a little help from Lewis. The Magic might be able to out-shoot a lot of their shortcomings, but they are primed to get bruised and battered inside by Boston or Cleveland (or Atlanta or Detroit) in a playoff series. They are, in a word, finesse.

2. An overreliance on the three-ball. The Magic jack up an average of 26 three-pointers per game, making an average of 10.5, for a 40.3 conversion percentage. That's pretty good. But it's a high risk/high reward proposition. Much like a gunslinger quarterback, the Magic live and die by the deep ball. Building so much of your offensive attack around low-percentage shots could come back to bite them if the shots stop falling.

Myth about the Magic: No one is paying attention to them.

Cavs fans can dispense with all the "Magic are going to sneak up and get us" talk and Magic fans can pull the plug on the "No one respects us" talk. The Magic are not going bump in the night anymore. They're the worst-kept secret in sports. They've arrived, the national media is stroking them, they're soaking up their share of the spotlight. If they ambush any team in the playoffs, that team gets what they deserve.

Boston Celtics

What makes them dangerous to Cleveland and Orlando:

1. They're the champs. They've been to the summit, they know what it takes to get there, they've already proven they can win a championship together. Come playoff time, the burden is still on the Cavs and Magic to knock them off.

2. Stopping the Big Three is asking a lot. And I'm not talking about Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. Allen can score, but come playoff time against top-flight defenses, he will be reduced to a one-dimensional specialist. The Big Three I refer to is Garnett, Pierce and Rajon Rondo.

Rondo is arguably the most important cog in the Celtics' attack. He is the penetrator who draws in defenses and creates open looks for Pierce and Garnett. That's especially important as Garnett has aged into a second-decade player and has traded in his low-post game for a mid-range jumper.

3. TD Banknorth Garden is quite possibly the most hostile playoff environment in the league. Staples Center in Los Angeles and our very own Quicken Loans Arena will certainly get into the conversation, but the Celtics' house will be filled with thousands of loud, obnoxious, likely inebriated Red Sox fans looking to keep their voice boxes conditioned until October. Gloria James doesn't want to know what they're saying about her whenever LeBron is within earshot.

What makes them vulnerable:

1. A suspect bench. Sure, the Celtics are still winning at a tremendous clip this year, but there is no denying that this is a team minus James Posey and P.J. Brown from last year's title team. The bench is thin when compared to other contenders, especially the Lakers and Cavs. Boston could have less of an ability to absorb injuries and fatigue.

If the Celtics were actually considering signing noted locker room hand grenade Stephon Marbury if and when he became a free agent, that a sure sign that Danny Ainge and Celtics management have spent more than a little time fretting over their bench depth. They know it's something that could be exposed over the course of a seven-game series.

2. A lack of team speed. The Celtics do many things well, but running the floor isn't one of them. We saw it in the Cavs' January 9 win over the Celtics: If you can speed the game up, you can take them out of their comfort zone and possibly tire out their 30-somethings sooner.

Myth about the Celtics: They're the biggest band of crybabies in the NBA.

Kevin Garnett's constant act of taunting the opposition, screaming and beating his chest like an amphetamine-crazed Ray Lewis has certainly gotten old. Anyone west of the Massachusetts state line is sick of hearing Paul Pierce referred to as "The Truth." Unfortunately, however, you must be without sin to cast the first stone. And the fact is that strutting, preening, taunting -- and especially whining -- is an epidemic in the NBA.

LeBron is among the league's biggest ref-whiners, following in the grand tradition of Tim Duncan. Dirk Nowitzki does it. Kobe Bryant does it. Rasheed Wallace sure as heck does it. So while the Celtics might have taken a sense of entitlement and verbalized arrogance to something of an extreme, they're far from alone in the league.

Offseason checkup

I need to think about baseball for a minute.

As I'm writing this on Friday evening, the temperature reading on my computer is minus-1. The forecast tells me the thermometer is going to bottom out at minus-11. There is also a foot of snow on the ground, and ice pretty much everywhere there isn't snow.

I could use a midsummer night's dream right about now. So let's check in with the Tribe. A team which, lost in the shuffle of the Browns' shakeup and the Cavs' fast start, has had quite an eventful offseason.

In years past, the Indians were criticized by myself and other writers for sitting on their collective hands during the winter months. This winter, following an 81-81 campaign that only reached the .500 mark thanks to a furious second-half comeback from the doldrums, Mark Shapiro and his staff went proactive.

Championships aren't won or lost in the offseason. But it's still good to see Shapiro roll the dice and attempt to improve a team that is well worth improving, if 2007's run to the ALCS is any indication.

Shapiro constructed the Tribe's offseason around four major moves -- two trades and two free agent signings. As of now, it looks like two of the moves were solid moves, and two were questionable.

Below, I give my grades for the four major moves of the Indians' offseason. If you disagree with them, the good news is that there is a long time and a lot of baseball to be played between now and October.

But I'll take the October weather right now, thanks very much.

1. Indians sign closer Kerry Wood to a two-year deal.

For now, forget Wood's history of arm trouble as a starter. Yeah, it could surface. But Wood has put enough distance between himself and his days as a starter that we can consider him reinvented.

The Wood deal works on multiple levels. Along with Juan Gonzalez and Kevin Millwood, it is one of the few examples of the Dolan-led Tribe shelling out big bucks for a major free agent. And unlike Gonzalez in 2001 and Millwood in 2005, Wood isn't coming off an injury or a lousy year and looking for a one-year contract to reclaim his market value.

His fastball flirts with 100 mph, and he has the breaking stuff to take advantage of his heater. After watching Bob Wickman and Joe Borowski close games on fumes and guile for most of the decade, Wood's explosive stuff should be thrilling to watch.

Since transitioning to the Cubs' bullpen in '07, Wood has become a legit stopper. He worked his way into the back end with 22 appearances in '07, amassing a 1-1 record with a 3.33 ERA, 24 strikeouts and 13 walks in 24.1 innings.

OK, so those stats aren't terribly impressive for a would-be closer. But if you consider his '07 season a prelude to his '08 campaign, the numbers look a lot more impressive.

In his first full season as a closer, Wood pitched 66.1 innings, converting 34 of 40 save chances with a 5-4 record and 3.26 ERA. He struck out 84, walked 18 and surrendered three home runs. The major shortcomings in his stat line are his hits allowed (54) and earned runs (24). But if he keeps up that K/BB ratio and converts saves, that's what counts.

Grade: A

2. Indians trade Franklin Gutierrez to Seattle as part of a three-way deal, receiving relief pitcher Joe Smith from the Mets and infielder Luis Valbuena from the Mariners.

The Mets and Mariners made bigger splashes in this trade, which went down in mid-December during the winter meetings. The Mets received Seattle closer J.J. Putz, while Seattle received seven players, including Gutierrez and reliever Aaron Heilman. But just because the Indians made the least noise doesn't mean they necessarily received the smallest return.

Smith made 82 appearances with the Mets in '08, compiling a 6-3 record and 3.55 ERA. What makes him particularly attractive to the Indians is his sidearm delivery. For a team that might break camp with Rafael Perez as the only late-inning lefty, the ability to give hitters different looks from the right side could be valuable.

A sidearm delivery is more than a gimmick or a way for a failed overhand pitcher to keep his career alive. There is a reason why guys like Tampa Bay's Chad Bradford seem to hang around in baseball for years, and always seem to find themselves on contenders.

Valbuena played 18 games with the Mariners last season, but he is still essentially a farmhand. But in an organization still trying to figure out exactly what its infield of the future will look like, throwing in a guy who hit .302 in 212 at-bats at Class AAA last year can't hurt. It appears Valbuena will start the season at Columbus.

Grade: B-plus

3. Indians trade a package including reliever Jeff Stevens to the Cubs for infielder Mark DeRosa.

This trade reeks too much of a Mark Shapiro and Eric Wedge pet move for me to accept it just yet. As we have seen over the years, Shapiro and Wedge love versatile, hard-nosed, under-the-radar players. You might call them "grinders." It wouldn't be a Shapiro-Wedge offseason without the acquisition of at least one grinder.

To be clear, I have nothing against versatile, hard-working players. Those attributes are valued in just about any profession. I have more of a problem with how Shapiro overvalues his so-called "grinders," and how Wedge uses them.

Mark DeRosa as a utility guy? Sure, why not? Mark DeRosa tossed into the battle royale for the starting second baseman's job? Cool. Mark DeRosa as your rubber-stamped starting third baseman? Um, can we talk about this?

DeRosa is a career .279 hitter. He wasn't a fulltime player until 2006, when he played in 136 games for the Rangers -- and it's not for lack of experience. He made his major league debut in 1998, and he'll turn 34 next month.

Prior to clouting 21 homers last year, he'd never hit more than 13 in a season. His 87 RBI last year for the Cubs is by far a career high. Entering his mid-30s, everything DeRosa did last year screams "career year" rather than "late bloomer," which is really what the Indians are hoping they have in DeRosa.

They also only have DeRosa, a 2009 free agent, for one more guaranteed year. Stevens, on the other hand, could be a mainstay of the Cubs bullpen for years to come. This seems to go against the value-based principles that Shapiro holds so dear when making trades and signings.

What really grinds my gears about this deal is that I am a proponent of moving Jhonny Peralta to third base and Asdrubal Cabrera to shortstop. Peralta played third in winter ball this year. Cabrera is so much of a natural shortstop, it almost hurts to watch his glove at second base. But with the Tribe's new utilityman-made-good at third, it appears the status quo will be kept as long as possible.

Shapiro and Wedge could do this the easy way. Make the inevitable infield shift in spring training, when experimentation is acceptable. Instead, it looks like they're going to make circumstances -- injuries, slumps, etc. -- force their hand into shifting Peralta and Cabrera. So instead of a nice, neat transition in March, we'll probably have an awkward transition in the middle of the season.

Call it paralysis by analysis or just plain old mule stubbornness. Whatever it is, it's not one of the more endearing traits of the Tribe's leadership.

Grade: C-minus

4. Indians sign Carl Pavano to a one-year deal.

OK, so it's only one year and a base salary of $1.5 million. That's way down from Pavano's 2008 salary of $11 million with the Yankees. For the Indians, it's a relatively low-risk proposition from a money standpoint.

But the Indians need a reliable veteran arm to help stabilize what might end up as a very young rotation behind Cliff Lee. They need more than a tide-me-over until Jake Westbrook completes his rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery.

Pavano might end up falling short on both counts.

He ended his '08 season with a relatively strong showing, but that was after four years of nearly continuous arm problems that limited him to 26 starts between 2005 and '08, making him one of the worst free-agent signing disasters in Yankee history.

In short, Pavano's injury history is so extensive, it's hard to believe he can stay healthy and take the ball every fifth day for an entire season. It doesn't matter how little guaranteed money the Indians have committed to Pavano, if he's on the disabled list, he's not going to be earning his paychecks, and the Indians will have the same hole to fill that they did before Pavano's arrival.

On top of that, it's difficult to see what made this guy attractive to Shapiro in the first place. You don't have to dig very deeply into Pavano's stats to see that he's been a mediocre pitcher for the vast majority of his career.

His prime years were 2003 and '04, the only two years of his career in which he eclipsed 200 innings pitched. In '03, he went 12-13 with a 4.30 ERA in helping the Marlins win the World Series. In '04 -- by far his career year, and a contract year to boot -- he went 18-8 with a 3.00 ERA, then left the Marlins to sign his infamous contract with the Yankees.

I'm all for second, third, fourth and fifth chances. But if Pavano can't keep his arm intact enough to take the ball every fifth day and pitch reasonably well, he's not going to help this team. And history says he won't be able to.

Grade: D

LeBron in prime time

In professional sports, a player's career unfolds in glacially-slow increments. In much the same way it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly when a geologic era ends and when another begins, it's -- albeit on a smaller scale -- difficult to measure when exactly a player enters his prime years.

All you can do is look for indicators. For those of us searching for the start of LeBron James' career prime, Friday's convincing win over the Celtics might have given us the strongest piece of evidence yet that LeBron is ready to reach his zenith.

Physically, LeBron has never not looked like a player in his prime years. He entered the league with an NBA body, NBA athletic talent and an incredibly-developed sense of how to handle NBA fame. Since then, he's only become bigger, more athletic and more savvy.

The only ingredient that was really missing was his approach to the game. More specifically, his approach to defense.

For his first five years in the league, LeBron did all of the right team-oriented things on the offensive end. He took over games when it was needed. He never stopped trusting his teammates, no matter how many three-balls Donyell Marshall bricked or how many passes smacked Drew Gooden's palms and landed out of bounds.

He became a leader. He took Daniel Gibson under his wing. He respected what his coaches told him. He was and is a model teammate.

But there is a certain amount of stubbornness associated with LeBron. Perhaps it's the product of having a superstar's ego. Perhaps he was simply more concerned with rounding out his offensive game. But LeBron's path to becoming a great individual defender seemed to meander far more than his path to stuffing the offensive stat sheet.

LeBron could play great defense when he wanted, but too often in years past, he'd play the passing lanes looking for a steal, or play a sort of half-speed on defense to conserve energy for the next trip down to the offensive end.

It was understandable to an extent when his teammates were Marshall, Gooden, Larry Hughes and Damon Jones, and LeBron was really the first, second and third options on offense -- reliable options, anyway. There are only so many ways one player can exert himself.

But the rarefied air occupied by Michael Jordan? The multiple rings? Those weren't going to be within LeBron's grasp until he rounded out his game at the defensive end.

Friday, in the fourth quarter, Mike Brown rotated LeBron onto Paul Pierce when other options proved insufficient. And for the first time on the big stage, we saw LeBron as a shutdown defender on an elite opponent.

Pierce is Boston's go-to guy in the second half. He's the clutch-shot drainer. He's the guy who takes on the other team's best scorer in games of one-upsmanship.

That's exactly into what Pierce was trying to convert Friday's game. A repeat of last spring's Game 7 between the Cavs and Celtics, when LeBron went off for 45 and Pierce for 41, and the Celtics edged the Cavs out of the playoffs en route to a 17th NBA title.

Last season, LeBron might have obliged Pierce's challenge to go mano-a-mano. Last season, a game like this might have disintegrated into LeBron and Pierce exchanging shot after shot while the other eight guys on the floor ran the in-game equivalent of suicides, baseline to baseline.

But this is a wiser LeBron, who realized that if Pierce caught fire from the floor, that would be Boston's best chance to get back into the game. With Pierce as his responsibility, LeBron made it a personal crusade to keep Pierce from finding clean looks at the basket.

LeBron has made defensive highlights before. Many times it involves an emphatic block. He had one of those on Friday night, too. But his defensive highlight of the evening came on a Boston possession late in the third quarter when, without the benefit of a double-team or the edge of the court to act as another defender, he physically walled Pierce off from doing anything with the ball.

Pierce was attempting to post LeBron, looking for any way to clear space for a shot. But LeBron stayed on him like a 260-pound wet t-shirt, blocking his attempts to go right and left, or pass the ball to a cutting teammate. Pierce was utterly walled off from any action moving toward the hoop. He had to relent, reset himself, and before he realized it, the shot clock grew late, and he was forced to fling a weak pass to Leon Powe, who tossed up an awkward miss.

After that sequence, Pierce -- and by extension, the Celtics -- started to lose a bit of their composure. Pierce's final stat line: 11 points on 4-of-15 shooting, 1-of-5 from beyond the arc.

When, exactly, LeBron learned that suffocating defense can intimidate opponents as much as an offensive barrage is not as important as the fact that he can now count it among his vast array of weapons. And that embraces the fact that he can use his superlative talent to play lockdown defense.

LeBron's individual defense added momentum to the Cavs' team defense, which held Boston to 41.3 percent shooting from the floor. The Celtics' inability to solve Cleveland's defensive attack seemed to reveal something about their character. After attaining so much success in such a short period of time last year, it's apparent the Celtics are having a hard time dealing with their current struggles in a manner that doesn't involve sulking and pouting.

Down by three and four possessions late in the fourth quarter, with Pierce and Kevin Garnett already sent to the bench muttering what we could assume were some not-nice things under their breath, Celtics coach Doc Rivers resorted to fouling Ben Wallace repeatedly. Wallace is a career 41.8 percent free throw shooter -- the worst of all time.

Once or twice, it made sense to resort to a "Hack-a-Ben" strategy. But as Wallace kept splitting his pairs of free throws and the strategy failed to pull the Celtics any closer, Rivers continued to foul Wallace, in an apparent act of denial-slash-frustration.

LeBron banked in a 40-foot shot on one of the Wallace fouls. It was a shot released in anticipation of the foul, and had LeBron released it a fraction of a second sooner, it might have resulted in a four-point play attempt, with three points going to LeBron and one possible point to Wallace.

It would be foolish and incredibly premature to say the Celtics and Cavs are headed in opposite directions. But on Friday night, LeBron reached a new pinnacle while the Celtics -- and their collective composure -- continued to slide.

We already knew LeBron could impose his will on a game from a pure athleticism and stat sheet-stuffing standpoint. But now, we are seeing a different type of LeBron emerge. One who excels at the psychological warfare of defensive basketball. The type of basketball that wins in May and June.

If Friday's game is an teaser for LeBron's prime years, his prime will be a prime unlike any other.

The Boobie Gibson interview

...Such as it was.

Thursday evening, on assignment for TheClevelandFan.com, I got the chance to pull aside one Mr. Daniel "Boobie" Gibson of the Cavaliers for a round of quick-fire questions, as Gibson finished up an autograph session at a cell phone store in North Olmsted.

The line for autographs was insanely long, and the public relations rep in charge of coordinating the event told me I was Gibson's 14th interview of the day. So I was understandably told to keep it short.

Herded into a back room of the store along with Gibson and a bunch of other people, I wedged 11 questions into somewhere around five minutes. All the while, Gibson signed a few extra items for various people and prepared to make a dash for his nice, warm limo.

That's the back story. The interview in its entirety can be read here.

Chemistry class

Chemistry on a professional sports team is a delicate thing. With million-dollar salaries and million-dollar egos in every direction, the players on a team basically have to make up their minds that they are going to coexist with teammates.

Even then, as playing time is distributed and redistributed by the coaches, as players find their way onto pedestals and into doghouses, on and off the injured list, the happy little locker room is in danger of catching a stray virus that can quickly spread into rampant discord.

So far, the Cavaliers have fended off any large-scale threats to their team's chemistry and remain an overall cohesive bunch that continues to win games at a thrilling pace -- 27-5 after Friday's win over the Bulls.

But that doesn't mean that Danny Ferry can take his hand off the rudder. Choppy waters lurk ahead as the 2009 portion of the schedule toughens considerably, and Ferry will find himself forced into making some critical decisions over the next couple of months.

There are two main schools of thought on the current state of the Cavs' roster. One school says that the Cavs are still a major trade away from the ability to take on all comers and win an NBA title. The other school says the Cavs have a cohesive roster winning at a franchise-record pace, so why fix what isn't broken?

Both schools of thought have some solid reasoning behind them, which makes Ferry's decision on what to do with the expiring contracts of Wally Szczerbiak and Eric Snow all the more difficult.

The injury to Zydrunas Ilgauskas' ankle throws another wrench into the works. Z originally sprained his ankle in early December. He returned after several games, but it quickly became apparent that the ankle wasn't healing properly. A second MRI this week revealed a small bone chip in the ankle, which will sideline him for up to a month.

The extended stretch without Z will give Ferry a definite sense of how this team will operate minus one of its key players. Until further notice, Anderson Varejao will start at center, and Varejao's bench minutes will go to some combination of J.J. Hickson, Darnell Jackson and Lorenzen Wright.

It means that rookies Hickson and Jackson will continue to develop their NBA games. It also means that Mike Brown could be forced to play his rookies in critical situations where they might make rookie mistakes, commit critical turnovers and possibly cost the team a win or two.

Generally, rebuilding teams play their rookies in critical situations, not teams trying to win 60-plus games and a world championship.

Ferry cannot allow injuries or other circumstances pressure him into making a trade he wouldn't otherwise make. But he also cannot let himself become convinced that great team chemistry is a golden egg that must be protected at all costs.

Yes, roles have been defined on the Cavs roster. Yes, a team generally performs at its best when players know what is going to be asked of them, night in and night out. But if Ilgauskas' absence proves an unsealable leak and the rookies aren't ready for the training wheels to come off, Ferry's strength of position in trade negotiations will become somewhat compromised, as the prospect of adding another veteran big man will become more of a necessity than a luxury. If the loss total creeps upward in Z's absence, the red flag will morph into a warning siren.

Come playoff time, and maybe even beforehand, the Cavs will need the best possible roster Ferry can deliver. That might prove to be the roster as it currently stands. But now that the injury to Ilgauskas has become a longer-term issue, chances are the Cavs' lack of veteran frontcourt depth is about to be exposed on some level, and Ferry won't be able to plug his ears, whistle "Dixie" and hope everything falls back into place with no front office intervention.

Ferry likes the makeup of his roster. It's hard to find a ton of fault with a 27-5 team, and a lot -- both good and bad -- can happen between now and the late February trade deadline. But if Ferry shuns potential trade partners just because he's trying to preserve harmony in his locker room, he's chasing the wrong goal. It's ultimately about hardware, not harmony. Good chemistry is merely a means to an end, but it's only one of the means.

In the end, a GM has to trust that his players are big boys and can work together if they're all focused on the common goal of winning a championship. As long as Ferry isn't bringing in a player with a longstanding reputation as a troublemaker and polarizer, the burden ultimately falls on Brown and locker-room leaders like LeBron James and Mo Williams to assimilate a new teammate.

Making a move just to make a move, or as a knee-jerk panic reaction to an injury, is a bad idea for a GM. But sitting on your hands just to preserve the status quo is almost as bad. In the past year, Ferry has done a great job of picking and choosing his spots to make bold moves. It has paid off. But now that he's seeing the payoff, it's not time to develop a case of cold feet.

The Cavs roster is very good, but it can still use some shoring up if Ferry can make the right deal happen. With Z on the shelf until possibly February, Ferry might face escalated pressure from within the organization (read: Team LeBron) to seek out and make that deal.

Lerner's lesson

In the coming months, Randy Lerner will hire the fourth leadership regime to head the Browns since the NFL hastily awarded a replacement expansion franchise to Cleveland in 1998.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's two years of Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark and Chris Palmer, four years of Policy and Butch Davis, and four years of Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel. Ex-president John Collins overlapped the previous two regimes for a couple of years.

It would be easy to lump the previous 10 years into one pile labeled "bad decisions." But each regime was hired under different circumstances and failed for different reasons.

Working in Lerner's favor: Savage and Crennel were the only two football operations heads hired under Lerner's direct supervision. The first two regimes were constructed primarily by Policy, who took the leadership role in the organization while Lerner's father took a far-more-comfortable background role.

By 2005, Al Lerner had died, Policy was back in northern California pursuing a second career making wine, and the buck stopped with Lerner the junior. Hindsight being 20/20, his first football hires reflected that of an executive who had a beginner's knowledge of NFL ownership, possibly put too much trust in the wrong people (such as Collins) and didn't take enough initiative when researching potential candidates.

In the end, Savage was hired because he has a reputation as a good talent evaluator. Little else factored into the decision-making process. Crennel was hired because he is a no-nonsense, candid, humble, down-to-Earth kind of guy with long-standing connections to Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. In other words, Crennel was the anti-Butch Davis with five Super Bowl rings.

Savage and Crennel both showed their Super Bowl-winning resumes to Lerner, and to the inexperienced Lerner, that was enough to impress.

But candidates from good organizations don't always equal good hires, even if they seem like the right men for the job at the outset.

From purely a talent-accumulating standpoint, the hire of Savage was defensible at the time. The Browns were quite possibly the most talent-deprived team in the NFL after Davis exited midway through the 2004 season. The Browns needed more talent, plain and simple, and Savage could -- and did -- ramp up the talent level of the roster.

Even if Savage felt that his place was on the road, scouting the upcoming draft class, instead of at the home office carrying out administrative duties, we as fans could live with that if Savage could string together a few solid drafts and make the Browns competitive again.

We could have lived with it through 2008 and beyond if the homefront was supervised by a head coach who had built a strong team identity and a culture of accountability. Obviously, that wasn't Crennel. So the burden fell back onto Savage to step in and take control, which he never really did.

The fundamental flaw that led to the demise of the Savage-Crennel regime was failing to develop an organizational identity and direction. A GM can amass all the talent in the world, but if he and the head coach haven't worked together to develop a method for developing and utilizing that talent, discord will follow in the locker room and the front office, and the losses will continue to outpace the wins.

Savage and Crennel might have been cordial, even friendly at times, but they didn't work well together. Lerner never demanded that they work well together. Lerner never demanded that they develop a system for working well together.

Savage and Crennel both seem to prefer the background to the spotlight. They're specialists --Crennel in his 3-4 defensive scheme and Savage in scouting -- so even with a system in place, both might still have proved themselves incapable of adapting to a larger set of responsibilities. But Lerner didn't give his first NFL hires the best chance to succeed.

Good owners don't meddle and undermine the authority of the people they hire. But good owners stay involved with their teams. Only those on the inside of the Browns organization truly know Lerner's level of involvement over the past four years, but the public perception is that he hired Savage and Crennel, told them to play nice with Collins and left a "call me if you need me" note on the lunch room bulletin board.

As we remember, it took less than a year for Collins and Savage to develop an irreconcilable rift, with Collins departing.

Lerner must handle things better on his second go-around. Even if he hires Bill Parcells, Scott Pioli or any other experienced NFL coaching/personnel guru, he must stay involved in the process of building the identity of his team. He must insist that he stay involved.

For many years, the Browns have survived on their municipal-heirloom and storied-franchise status. The only identity the Browns have had over the past 20 years has centered on Jim Brown, Lou Groza and grainy footage of the franchise's glory years. It's great to remember and honor your history, but if your franchise's relevance is based solely on building bridges to the past, something is wrong with your present.

Lerner has one more crack at getting this right before he faces massive pressure from around Northeast Ohio to sell the team. These next hires need to reflect an owner who has learned from his past mistakes, an owner who will hire the best all-around candidates, with evaluation, leadership and organizational skills, and stick with them to make sure they're developing the organization properly.

There is still hope for Randy Lerner as an NFL owner. But it's flickering hope at best, and at stake are more than just wins and losses. The true tragedy would be if Lerner leaves the Browns organization -- his father's work -- as a failure.

Sideshow Braylon

Give Braylon Edwards this much credit: He stays true to himself.

Sports commentary is so drab with countless talking heads and scribes droning on and on about "team first," "grind it out" and "shut your mouth and play." It's like Eric Wedge's Indians postgame press conferences have taken over the world.

Edwards and the rest of his Browns teammates have undoubtedly heard time and time again how great teams are focused on common goals, how great teams stomp out the brush fires of infighting and pettiness before they become raging conflagrations. How truly great players know how to make their teammates better.

Edwards tried that shoe on last year. It didn't fit. So rather than become something he's not, this year, the back of the jersey is the new front. Jeff "Independent Contractor" McInnis pioneered the style with the Cavs a few years back.

This year, public whining, outbursts and self-martyrdom are in on the shores of Lake Erie. Even Phil Savage got in on the act. And if the general manager can't resist the occasional public F-bomb, what can be expected of his players?

Following Monday's 30-10 loss to the Eagles, Edwards set the gripe bar so high that other notable whiners like Kellen Winslow and Jamal Lewis will be hard-pressed to top it. It would take something along the lines of Brady Quinn complaining that women don't find him attractive enough.

Edwards spouted to the media his belief that he's underappreciated in Cleveland. That he has a target on his back in Ohio because he went to the University of Michigan. That he doesn't care about the fans and what they have to say about him. Which of course means he cares very much about what others have to say about him, otherwise his reaction to criticism wouldn't be so bitter.

If it wasn't official before, it's official now: 2007 was an aberration for Edwards. The well-behaved, mostly-reliable, pass-catching Edwards was a one-year wonder. His default setting is loud-mouthed, mercurial, and way too concerned with what others have to say, which plays into the mental cloud that seems to consume him whenever he's open and notices the ball sailing toward him. It's a dark side of his personality he'll have to fight for his entire career.

Players like Edwards become habitual pass-droppers for one reason: When a pass is heading toward them, they feel 75,000 sets of eyes staring at them. That's why Edwards seems to drop easy passes in the open field, then proceeds to catch difficult passes heaved through a thicket of defenders. He doesn't have time to think about the difficult catches.

That hypersensitivity seeps out of Edwards in multiple ways. After the Dallas game in Week 1, when LeBron James showed up at Cleveland Browns Stadium to root for the Cowboys, Edwards wondered aloud if LeBron even likes playing for Cleveland. It didn't amount to anything, but no one could have blamed Cavs management for going to Browns management and telling them to cram a sock in their wide receiver's mouth.

It's ironic, since a dislike of playing in Cleveland was exactly the sentiment Edwards conveyed to several national media outlets in 2006, after the Browns careened to a 4-12 record.

Idiotic braying from receivers is something of a phenomenon around the NFL. The Browns have two Chatty Cathies in their receiver corps alone. But what Edwards did trumps even the memorable "piece of meat" comment from Winslow earlier this season.

Winslow's remark was aimed at Browns management, Phil Savage in particular, and was likely a jab in the ongoing sparring session between Winslow and Savage over the former's contract demands. It was lacking in tact, it had no place in public view, but there was a motive beyond simply griping.

By contrast, Edwards' sniveling soliloquy on Monday was so forced, fabricated and sopping wet with self-pity, it's reasonable to ask if he really meant it, or if he was just having an emotional episode in the wake of another blowout loss.

First of all, exactly what are we supposed to be appreciating about a wide receiver, a former No. 3 overall pick, who has just three touchdown catches all year? What are we supposed to say to a guy who made a bet with Olympic superhero Michael Phelps that he'd catch twice as many touchdowns as Phelps won gold medals? It's like flipping fate the bird. Phelps won eight gold medals in Beijing, if you didn't hear, and Edwards was going to be hard-pressed to equal last year's 16 touchdown catches.

With Ken Dorsey under center, it's highly unlikely that Edwards will catch another touchdown all year.

You catch the ball, we appreciate you. You become a serial pass-dropper, you make foolish, highly-publicized bets with Olympic royalty, you wonder aloud if our superstar basketball player wants to be here, then you don't get appreciated. Because, as a receiver, there is but one way to appreciate Braylon Edwards. He must receive the ball, as is described in his job title. The bet with Phelps, the snarking about LeBron, could all be overlooked if he'd catch the ball.

Second, the Michigan comment. Admittedly, Cleveland is the biggest Ohio State hotbed outside of Columbus. But there are plenty of Michigan fans in Northeast Ohio as well, and plenty of cross-pollination of college allegiances among Browns fans.

Never once have I heard a Browns fan utter "I can't stand Braylon Edwards because he went to Michigan." There are probably a few Ohio State honks out there who feel that way, but they're in the minority. If Edwards thinks he's in enemy territory wearing brown and orange on Sundays just because he wore maize and blue on Saturdays, he has a vivid imagination.

Edwards seems to have a hard time differentiating between a fan base that is upset with him over a dismal season and a fan base that hates his guts because of who he is and where he went to school. Edwards is taking his struggles, and Browns fans' collective reaction to his struggles, way too personally -- a sure sign of immaturity.

If it were up to me, I'd put this 2008 season to bed right now. Tell the Bengals and Steelers to save themselves the trips to the stadium the next two Sundays. Nothing good can come of these final two games for the Browns. And Braylon Edwards, an incredibly talented athlete who still factors into this team's future, will likely experience nothing that will contribute positively to his career or his perception of Browns fans.

Alas, that won't happen. NFL teams play 16-game seasons and Edwards will have to play out the string. But two more weeks of Edwards in the spotlight and growing increasingly frustrated with each loss means two more weeks for him to potentially pop off to the waiting cameras and microphones, further alienating himself from a fan base that has already seen way too many talented young players crumble in a Browns organization with no leadership.

Edwards will almost certainly return to the Browns in 2009, no matter how hated he feels in Cleveland. But anymore, I'm starting to wonder if his mouth, not his hands, will ultimately end his Browns career.

Before you start ledging...

Saturday's 97-92 loss in Atlanta was the Cavaliers' first in 24 days. It dropped their record to 20-4. It marked the end of an 11-game winning streak, tying a team record, and a stretch of 19 wins in 20 games.

Saturday's game was the end of a four-in-five-nights stretch, without Zydrunas Ilgauskas or Daniel Gibson, against a quality opponent on the road. In short, they were bound to lose a game at some point, and if we were honest with ourselves as fans, we probably drew a mental circle around this game.

Yes, the Cavs have yet to beat a quality opponent on the road. You can look at it in one of two ways: Either they have yet to get that long-sought "statement" win on the road, or they're losing the games they had the highest probability of losing. Either way, obsessing over four losses while shrugging off 20 wins would amount to giving a gift horse a dental examination. This is still the best start in Cavs history.

But over the past week, without Gibson or Ilgauskas in the lineup, the Cavs have been struggling to keep up their pace. The string of double-digit wins ended Wednesday in Philadelphia, when Z went to the bench with a sprained ankle. The rematch Friday in Cleveland was a comfortable 16-point win, but the Cavs only really outplayed the 76ers in the second quarter, winning it 27-14. The two teams more or less battled to a draw in the other three quarters.

Saturday, the vulnerabilities of the shorthanded Cavs finally resulted in a loss. Without Z, the Cavs were outrebounded and none of the Atlanta big men had to concern themselves with contesting jump shots out to 20 feet. Without Gibson to provide scoring off the bench, other players had to step up and provide an offensive spark alongside Mo Williams and LeBron James. To that end, Delonte West (5-for-19 from the field) and Wally Szczerbiak (0-for-5) didn't answer the bell.

Now, the games against Denver this week and Houston next week have sprouted red flags. If the Cavs can lose to the Hawks, they most certainly can lose on the road against the Nuggets, a first-place team that received a new lease on life when the Pistons dropped Chauncey Billups into their laps earlier this season. If the Rockets come to The Q with a healthy Tracy McGrady, Ron Artest and Yao Ming, they're going to pose a legitimate threat to hand the Cavs their first home loss of the year.

If the Cavs head into their Christmas Day contest with Washington as losers of three of their last five, not only will they start fading in Boston's rear view mirror in the race for the East's one-seed, the naysayers who are dismissing the Cavs' fast start as the product of growing fat on lottery teams will have some legitimate evidence to go along with their bellyaching. No Z, no Boobie, no difference, they'll say. Championship teams find ways to overcome adversity and win.

That's true. And if the Cavs start treading water, as opposed to building on their fast start, they will have let adversity start to get the best of them. But the good news is, this team still can find other ways to overcome adversity. And the first place Mike Brown might want to look is the starting lineup.

Brown is right to trust his bench players to step up in times of need. Anderson Varejao has moved into the starting lineup in lieu of Ilgauskas and performed admirably. But Andy in the starting lineup means a domino effect on the bench, as rookies Darnell Jackson and J.J. Hickson are pressed into service, helping to eat up the bench minutes that would normally go to Varejao.

Jackson and Hickson, as many rookie big men do, commit fouls at an alarming rate. Jackson committed two fouls in five minutes on Saturday. A third-grader could have calculated that Jackson would have fouled out in 15 minutes at that rate. Hickson committed one foul in three minutes, putting him on pace for a dismissal after 18 minutes.

Hickson and Jackson are not ready for big minutes, or meaningful minutes. Not less than two months into their rookie seasons. But as long as Varejao remains in the starting lineup, edging the rookies into the rotation will be a matter of necessity, not an option. And if Ben Wallace tweaks a back muscle, heaven help us all.

The other solution -- one that Brown might have to examine should Z's absence drag into the middle of next month -- is to move Varejao back to the bench, shift Wallace to the center spot, LeBron to power forward and start either Szczerbiak or Sasha Pavlovic at small forward.

Ideal? No. But it's a move that might fit the Cavs roster more naturally than starting Wallace and Varejao side-by-side.

Wallace was a center throughout his career until coming to the Cavs and moving to power forward so he could coexist with Z. Wallace knows how to play the center position, as long as he has some proficient scorers alongside him in the frontcourt. LeBron, at 6'-9" and 260 pounds, has a power forward's body. Playing a power forward's game might limit him to an extent, but his off-the-charts talent will allow him to take liberties playing virtually any position on the floor. He'll figure out a way to impact a game from the four-spot.

Inserting Wally at small forward might sacrifice some athleticism, but at 6'-6" and 240-odd, he can play the position and stretch defenses when his shot is falling. Same goes for Pavlovic, though he's a little smaller than Wally.

The argument here is that it's better to insert Wally or Sasha into the starting lineup, drawing on a position where the Cavs have real depth, instead of Brown starting his lone rotational bench big, leaving two rookies and Lorenzen Wright in reserve.

Any way Brown tries to mask it, the absences of Z and Boobie will be evident until they return. They're just that important. But dealing with adversity is all about making the best out of what you have.

As long as the wins keep coming, Brown doesn't need to look at more drastic solutions. But while Saturday's loss in Atlanta was just the fourth in 24 games, it also might have been a warning sign.

The upcoming games against Denver and Houston will show us if the Cavs are approaching their first hardships of the season in the right manner. If they aren't, here's hoping that Brown is willing to make the necessary adjustments.

A tale of two records

When your team is 18-3 and has its sights locked squarely on a world championship, individual records seem rather trivial.

In May and hopefully June, when the Cavs are battling it out in high-stakes playoff games, attempting to end Cleveland's sports title drought at 45 years, few are going to remember a damp night in early December, when Zydrunas Ilgauskas and LeBron James each carved a notch in the Cavs record book.

The ring is most definitely the thing, but as far as the plodding marathon of the NBA regular season goes, Tuesday's 114-94 win over the Raptors was pretty special.

Before we even get to the accomplishments of Z and LeBron, the Cavs created some of their own NBA history, winning their ninth consecutive game by 12 or more points. No team -- not the 1996 Bulls, not the 1986 Celtics, not the 1972 Lakers -- has ever done that. They also set a franchise record by winning their fourth straight game by 20 or more points.

Naysayers will point out that the Cavs' great start has included wins over the Knicks, Bucks, Thunder and Bobcats. But in the 30-team NBA, the talent disparity between teams is relatively small, and the Cavs are still routinely treating their opponents like North Carolina treats midmajor schools on the college level.

This type of dominance doesn't typically happen in the NBA. But so far, the Cavs have been all about making history this season.

Which brings us to Z, LeBron and the records they broke on Tuesday. Ilgauskas is now the franchise's all-time leading rebounder with 5,230. LeBron is the franchise's all-time steals leader with 737. The men they passed were not-so-arguably the two greatest players in the franchise's history prior to LeBron: Brad Daugherty and Mark Price, respectively.

LeBron and Z are two starkly different players who have taken two starkly different roads to the record books. Yet they share a bond that seems to go deeper than most NBA teammates.

Ilgauskas' road to the rebound record is one of perseverance. If you've followed the Cavs over the past 12-plus years, you know the story by now. Ilgauskas came to Cleveland in the 1996 draft, eight picks after the team selected Vitaly Potapenko out of Wright State. Ilgauskas was something of a project player, tall and gangly, but with quick feet and a soft shooting touch.

But his feet soon started betraying him. Broken bones in his feet caused him to miss his would-be rookie season of 1996-97, after missing his last professional season in Lithuania due to a broken foot. He recovered to make the All-Rookie Team in 1998, but was on the shelf again for the 1999-2000 season. He returned and helped the Cavs out of the gate to a 15-8 start in the 2000-01 season, but just before Christmas, during a game in Miami, he broke his foot again.

Bitterly discouraged, Z contemplated retirement. The following summer, the Cavs drafted seven-foot high schooler DeSagana Diop as Z's potential replacement. But Z gave it one last try, a radical restructuring of his left foot. After months of grueling rehab, Z took the floor again in December 2001.

It was a watershed moment. Z has been among the most durable centers in the league since then. Now, his aging back is of greater concern than his feet. Eight years ago, no one thought he'd reach the bad-back portion of his career, something just about every 30-something big man deals with in pro basketball.

Not only did Z return, he became a borderline-elite center, earning all-star nods in 2003 and '05, improving his shooting stroke from outside and morphing into one of the best offensive rebounders in the game. Somehow, his march to the Cavs' all-time rebounding record became a matter of "when," not "if."

Z's early-career injuries seem to have given him perspective on what is happening now. In an ego-first era of NBA basketball, when many players with two all-star berths to their credit might have a hard time accepting a supporting cast role under LeBron, Z not only tolerates it, he enjoys it.

Z was one of the first players LeBron sought out after the 2003 draft, promising Z that he'd turn the Cavs into a winner. Even if LeBron didn't embrace the Cavs as a kid in Akron, Z's story still made an impact on him.

When the Cavs clinched their first-ever NBA Finals berth in 2007, LeBron sought out Z for an emotional bear hug. This was less than six weeks after Z and his wife lost a son and daughter, delivered stillborn.

Perhaps even more than some fans, LeBron realizes what Z has been through and what Z means to the Cavaliers organization. In the days leading up to both players' record-setting night, LeBron was attempting to deflect attention off himself and onto Ilgauskas, openly campaigning for Z's No. 11 to hang from the rafters at The Q someday.

To that, I say: As long as it's alongside No. 23 and a couple of NBA championship banners.

Appropriately, LeBron and Z each set their records in their own, in-character ways. LeBron did it with speed and flair as he picked off a pass from Jose Calderon less than a minute into Tuesday's game, sprinted down the floor, took a return pass from Delonte West and threw down a vicious dunk. No fuss, no muss, and when Mike Brown took a timeout so LeBron could feel the love from the crowd, LeBron walked to center court, raised his arms and soaked it in.

As has been the theme throughout his career, Z's record-setting moment came after a period of waiting. He quickly grabbed three boards to tie the record, then was sent to the bench as the reserves came onto the floor.

Z didn't nab his record-setting rebound until two minutes remained in the first half. In true Ilgauskas form, it wasn't pretty, but it was effective. And it came with a little help from LeBron, who was poised to snatch from Z a carom off a Jason Kapono miss. But in midair, LeBron relented, the ball bounced to the floor, Z scooped it up and set the record.

When Z's took his curtain call, it was nowhere near center court and involved a quick wave to the crowd. It wasn't Z being standoffish, it was Z wanting to get back to the business of letting LeBron take up the spotlight.

Through all six years of the LeBron Era, the relationship between he and Ilgauskas has been the one constant on the basketball floor for the Cavs. It's a work-related friendship that doesn't get a ton of press, but it has endured. And it is a central part of what makes the Cavs work so well as a team.

Tuesday night, both players had a chance to take an individual bow for their accomplishments. But when, and if, the Cavs ever hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy as the NBA's world champions, rest assured it will be because LeBron and Z worked together to get there.

Someday, we might be able to look up at the banners hanging from the rafters of The Q and re-live it all.

Maybe Marty

He never won the big one. He never even played for the big one.

That tagline might follow Marty Schottenheimer around for the rest of his days. His failure to get a team to the Super Bowl in 21 NFL head coaching seasons is the most famously infamous line on his resume.

The fact that during his tenure coaching the Browns, he presided over two of the most spectacular playoff flameouts in team history -- you know them as "The Drive" and "The Fumble" -- might cause you to proceed with caution when warming to the idea of giving the 65-year-old a second crack at resurrecting Cleveland professional football.

And to that, I say: If you're worried about what might happen should the Browns reach another AFC Championship Game, someone needs to check your garage for paint fumes. Give me The Drive and The Fumble any year over the decade-long procession of failure that has been the Cleveland Browns since 1999.

Rumor has it that Schottenheimer wants back in the coaching game, and he'd be interested in a second tenure with the Browns -- though he has vaguely denied an interest in a return to coaching on several occasions, most recently Thursday night on NFL Network.

Not that denials are to be 100 percent believed. Generally, money talks and other stuff walks in the world of professional sports. Schottenheimer is likely no exception.

If Bill Cowher's allegiance to the the Rooney family and Steeler Nation is strong enough to withstand the gobs of cash Randy Lerner appears poised to throw at him after the season, Schottenheimer is a worthy (if nearly as expensive) Option 1A.

There is an overwhelming reason why: wins and losses. Schottenheimer has far more of the former than the latter.

Schottenheimer has a career 200-126-1 coaching record. In 21 seasons with the Browns, Chiefs, Redskins and Chargers, he's led a team to a losing record only twice. His teams have won double-digit games 11 times. He's won eight division titles.

Unlike Cowher, Schottenheimer's body of work can be judged outside of the context of one team. With few exceptions, he's won wherever he's gone.

He's won with quarterbacks ranging from Bernie Kosar to Steve DeBerg to Joe Montana, Steve Bono to Rich Gannon to Elvis Grbac, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers. He's won with running backs ranging from Kevin Mack and Earnest Byner to Christian Okoye, Barry Word, Marcus Allen and LaDainian Tomlinson.

Different players, different systems, different styles. Schottenheimer has adapted to his resources and kept winning.

The belief here is that Schottenheimer would be an excellent foundation-building coach for this Browns team, which has a decent amount of talent, but lacks discipline, fundamentals and a collective identity.

Schottenheimer is a coach who can step in and establish instant credibility with his players, something Romeo Crennel appears to have done only by playing the role of Mr. Nice Guy. Where players like Crennel personally, they'd be forced to respect someone like Schottenheimer. The respect factor is obviously absent from the current coach-player relationship in the Browns locker room, no matter how many players stick up for Crennel.

Schottenheimer would bring a dominant personality to the head coach's position, and a sense of law and order will likely follow. You don't last more than two decades as an NFL coach without being good at developing discipline in your players, eradicating mistakes and sloppy play, and getting everyone focused on a common set of goals.

Twenty-one seasons as a coach says Schottenheimer understands that in order to build an army, you need to build soldiers. Right now, the Browns are more like a ragtag militia.

Of course, there would be a catch to Marty's second tenure as Browns coach: It likely wouldn't last more than a few years. At 65, it's reasonable to wonder how much gas Schottenheimer has left in the tank. Three or four years of organization-building might be enough to drain the remaining juice out of Schottenheimer's engine.

That's why, should he be hired as Browns coach, Schottenheimer would need a very specific short-term goal: To turn the foundation of the Browns organization from quicksand to concrete. Schottenheimer would be called in to lay the framework for future success by reforming the team's football operations (which might or might not include the assistance of Phil Savage or another general manager), getting rid of the rampant fundamental flaws currently plaguing the team on and off the field, and developing a well-defined team identity.

All the while, Schottenheimer would need to be developing a successor -- maybe son Brian, currently the offensive coordinator of the Jets. His successor could then hopefully build upon the foundation laid by Schottenheimer and turn the Browns into a perennial contender.

A great coaching system is what teams like Patriots and Steelers have, and what teams like the Browns need. And when you get right down to it, save for a rough-around-the-edges Bill Belichick, the last time a Browns coach developed anything resembling a successful system was Schottenheimer nearly 25 years ago.

The other major drawback to Schottenheimer is his checkered history with the management of teams he's worked for. Friction with Art Modell over a lack of an offensive coordinator paved his way out of Cleveland in 1988. Redskins owner Dan Snyder fired Schottenheimer after one season in Washington to make way for Steve Spurrier. Schottenheimer's relationship with Chargers president Dean Spanos was notoriously icy, and ultimately led to his firing after a 14-2 season in 2006.

In much the same way it would be difficult to envision Savage and Cowher coexisting for long, it would be difficult to envision Savage and Schottenheimer sharing space without stepping on each other's toes. Whose side you take would depend on whether you believe talent evaluation or coaching is more important to a team's success.

The most important quality the next Browns head coach can possess is a track record of success as an NFL head coach. It appears that Randy Lerner concurs on that point. But beyond that, it's time for Lerner to dig a bit deeper and look at how the success of his coaching candidates has been achieved.

A candidate from a successful organization does not always equal a successful hire. Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark, Chris Palmer, Butch Davis, Savage and Crennel have all proved that to greater and lesser degrees. Cowher has 15 seasons and 149 victories with the Steelers as his main selling point. But until he successfully runs a second NFL team, the eternal debate will rage on whether he was the generator or beneficiary of a rock-solid organization in Pittsburgh.

Viewed through that lens, Schottenheimer is something of a safer pick than Cowher to lead the Browns out of the doldrums. He developed perennial winners in three of his four NFL coaching stops, which means there is reason to believe he could once again develop the Browns into a winner -- or at the very least, do the dirty work of organizational muck removal.

A non-LeBron Cavs article

We're about one month through the Cavaliers season. And what have we learned so far?

LeBron might leave for the Knicks in 2010. Or he might not. Or he might leave for the Nets. Or the Lakers. Or the Pistons. Or the Heat. Or the Mavericks. Or Greece. Or none of the above.

LeBron is the Cavs' most important player by far. That's obvious. Without him, there is no championship run possible. But that doesn't mean we can't be sick of hearing about what he does, what he says and what he thinks between games. And for my money, we've gotten way too much of that over the past few weeks.

ESPN isn't the lone national media offender, but as I'm writing this, it's late Friday afternoon, a full 72 hours after the Cavs played the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, a full week after the Knicks made their highly-publicized trades with the Warriors and Clippers to clear salary cap space for the summer of 2010, and ESPN is still running new stories on the subject.

I can't decide whether it's more comical or pathetic that, despite the fact that the Cetlics, Cavs and Lakers are all on pace to win more than 60 games, despite the fact that the NBA might have one of its best groupings of elite teams in years, the only basketball story on which the national media can focus is the summer of 2010 and what the sorry-ass Knicks are going to do with their newfound cap space.

So in that vein, I'm going to cut the LeBron talk right here and now. It's time to focus on the stories that deserve attention in 2008. The Cavs, it might shock some of you, have other players. And for the rest of this article, we're going to shed light on some of the biggest non-LeBron storylines of the 2008-09 season so far.

1. So THAT'S what a point guard looks like

It's no secret that Mo Williams is the biggest difference between the Cavs of last year and the Cavs of this year. He was acquired by Danny Ferry in August to be a difference maker.

But even Ferry might not have envisioned Williams fitting in as well as he has.

After some initial bouts with sloppy ball-handling, Williams has become everything the Cavs could have asked and more. His stats are slightly down across the board, but that's largely because he's averaging 33.5 minutes per game, a career low since he became a full time starter in 2006.

The percentage-based stats that aren't affected by minutes played remain steady. He's making a strong 45 percent of his field goals, slightly above his career average of 44 percent. He's shooting 39 percent from beyond the three-point arc and his free throws have been nearly perfect -- 97 percent. However, it would be nice to see his free throw attempts increase from the current 2.3 per game.

Williams has been as advertised: He's a scoring point guard with speed and quickness who can consistently hit jumpers, but he's unselfish enough to make the pass to an open teammate. The veteran leadership he's brought to the table has been a bonus, and has helped the Cavs roster jell sooner than it might have otherwise.

His man defense isn't stellar, but Mike Brown's team defense concept is designed to minimize players' individual defensive deficiencies, so it's not a cause for extensive worry at the moment.

2. So THAT'S what a shooting guard looks like

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Williams' arrival has been Delonte West. Moved to shooting guard after Williams was acquired, it looked like West might become a mismatched piece in Cleveland. West was an excellent two-guard during his college career at St. Joseph's, when he was paired with Jameer Nelson. But at 6'-3" he became more of a 'tweener guard when the Celtics took him 24th overall in the 2004 draft.

For three years in Boston, half a year in Seattle and half a year in Cleveland, West was more or less operating as a shooting guard playing point guard. His handle is good enough to play the point adequately, but as with most shooting guards who aren't Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, West is at his best when he doesn't have to ignite the offense.

Transferred to shooting guard this year, West has thrived. None of his main stats (11.5 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 3 APG) are career highs, but his field goal percentage (.533) and his three-point percentage (.444) are by far his career bests. And it's not due to fewer field goal attempts. He's attempting a career-high 4.2 threes per game, and his 8.1 field goal attempts per game is slightly below his 8.4 career average.

West is still undersized for a shooting guard, and while he's widely regarded as the Cavs' best defensive backcourt player, having a 6'-3" shooting guard can still create some matchup problems when facing teams with bigger backcourts. As it is, with West, 6'-1" Williams and 6'-2" Daniel Gibson, other teams are making an effort post the Cavs' guards up. But it hasn't prevented the Cavs from streaking to a hot start, largely because Williams and West have been shooting so well.

3. Don't order the rocking chairs just yet

There was no bigger reason to fret over the Cavs heading into this year than the backs of Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Ben Wallace. Both ended last season with balky spinal columns. Z ruptured a disk. Wallace looked like the carcass of the player who won four NBA Defensive Player of the Year awards between 2002 and 2006.

If Z and Big Ben couldn't retain some of their all-star form from years past, the Cavs would be in deep trouble, with little depth at the big man positions.

But so far this year, the Cavs' two 30-something bigs look like wily veterans. Neither is as spry or mobile as once upon a time, but both are contributing.

More than at any other point in his career, Z is using his deft shooting touch to stretch defenses. For the most part, Z's role on the pick-and-fade has been to set a screen, slide over to someplace on the wing and set up shop to take a 15-to-18 foot shot. He's been money from there for most of his career.

Now, he's fading back to the 20-foot range. Sometimes, he's playing the role of a 7'-3" shooting guard, camped out as far as the three-point line waiting for a kickout pass. The chances of you seeing Z shoot a three in a game, let alone make one, are still kind of rare, but they're more common this year. If Z continues to make his threes, he might actually start forcing his man to come out and contest the shot, opening up rebounding opportunities for his teammates. It's not quite a weapon in Z's arsenal yet, but it's at least something the other team has to consider when compiling a scouting report.

Z is part of the talented frontcourt unit making life a lot easier on Wallace. Big Ben can't jump like he did during his Pistons heyday, so the days of him averaging double-digit rebounds for a season are over. But what Wallace does still possess are quick feet and a great deal of intelligence and mechanical know-how about defensive basketball.

In other words, he's a man after Mike Brown's heart.

What Wallace can still do is play exceptional help-and-recover defense. The Spurs' well-oiled help defense is what vexed the Cavs during the 2007 Finals, playing no small role in San Antonio's lopsided sweep.

A healthy Wallace should do wonders to bridge that gap should the Cavs find themselves playing the Spurs, or any other great defensive team, this season. Wallace has the quickness to get out and help pressure smaller players on the wings, even the perimeter at times, then slide back into the paint to contest a shot. Players with his size and physical bulk don't commonly cover that kind of ground.

Though he doesn't stuff the stat sheet anymore, a healthy Wallace is still a dynamic defensive player, and we've seen that on display in the season's first month.

4. Disciplined Thing, you make my heart sing

For his first four years in the league, Anderson Varejao gained a reputation as a player who is high on energy but low on skill, basketball smarts, discipline and anything else that might further his basketball career.

But to his credit, he's worked on his game, and now it's starting to show. This year, we've seen the next step in the Andy Evolution: Wild Thing version 2.0, The Disciplined Thing.

The player who I once thought had without a doubt the worst hands in the league can now cut to the basket, take a quick pass and perform a reverse layup -- though only right-handed. We can't get too carried away, here.

Varejao still spots up for jumpers a bit too often, but when he lets a 17-footer fly, it's no longer a "What the F&@# are you thinking?!!" proposition. Perhaps most surprising, he's making free throws at more than 69 percent so far this year. That will make his career 58-percent mark rise in a hurry.

It's still too early to pass judgment, but it's encouraging to know that Varejao is willing to work at the skill portion of his game. He's transitioning from a dime-a-dozen energy guy to someone the Cavs might try to re-sign this coming offseason and attempt to build around.

5. Rookie watch

The Cavs' two rookie draft picks, J.J. Hickson and Darnell Jackson, really arrived on the scene this past week against the Knicks and Thunder. Of course, since it was against the Knicks and Thunder, you'd be within your right to scoff. But sometimes all it takes is a rookie gaining a little bit of confidence that he can play the game at the NBA level.

Hickson has certainly had his rookie mistakes, most of them on defense. His offensive game is predictably evolving at a faster rate than his defense, but he still tries to ball fake too much and tries too hard to force shots in the low post. But if you saw some of his post moves against Oklahoma City and his quicks in the open floor, it shouldn't take long to see this kid has some serious potential.

If his performances against New York and Oklahoma City are any indication, Jackson was worth the wait while he recovered from a broken wrist. In his first couple of NBA games, he's been a rugged bumper-grinder who looks fairly polished from four years at Kansas.

I still think the Cavs will need to add another veteran big man for the stretch run and the playoffs, but it's good to get Hickson and Jackson minutes early in the season. It will help their development, which is critical, since one or both of these guys might be starting in several years.

6. Bad Boobie

It's not all peaches and cream for the Cavs. Despite the franchise-best start and all of the positives on the team, there are still a few areas for improvement -- none more glaring than Daniel Gibson.

Maybe it's because he's taking the focus off his shooting in an effort to develop his ball-handling skills and become a total-package point guard. Maybe it's just a plain old slump. Whatever the reason, Boobie's numbers have been way off so far this year.

In 24 minutes, he's averaging 8.3 points per game. That's not too bad, except when you consider that he's making field goals to the tune of just 37.5 percent and his three-point percentage is a eye-covering 27.9. He's taking more shots than he ever has per game in his career (8.5), but making fewer field goals.

Even though it's admirable that Gibson has expressed a desire to become a better all-around player, his primary value to the Cavs will always rest with his ability to knock down three-balls. So if anything is taking Gibson's focus off his shooting, he needs to back-burner it as soon as possible. The offseason is the time for skill development. Now is the time for doing what you do best and helping your team win games.