Overtime overview

The NFC Championship Game sent the Saints to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. It also had the type of ending that only the NFL can provide:

One team, one drive, one possession, one field goal. The Vikings offense never took the field. From the moment Minnesota lost the overtime coin toss, they were fighting a steep uphill battle. As soon as New Orleans' high powered offense crossed into Minnesota territory on the ensuing drive, a field goal attempt was well within sight. From that point on, the game essentially hinged on the accuracy of Garrett Hartley's kicking leg.

It is true that the Vikings -- and more specifically, Brett Favre -- created their own mess. Favre killed a shot at what could have been a game-winning field goal attempt by hip-shooting the ball straight to Saints defensive back Tracy Porter on an incredibly stupid throw with seven seconds left in regulation.

But that interception doesn't change the fact that the events of the game from that point forward still shine a much-needed light on the NFL's overtime rules.

The NFL's sudden death overtimes rules, which have been in place for the playoffs since the 1940s and in place for regular season games since 1974, essentially takes the overtime format the NHL used prior to 2005 and attempts to fit it to football.

There is a timed period -- a full 15 additional minutes in the case of the NFL and five minutes in the case of the NHL -- in which the game proceeds under regulation-time rules, except the NHL now permits one fewer skater on the ice. The first team to score, wins. If the timed period ends and neither team has scored, the game ends in a tie. In order to remove the anticlimactic tie-game outcome, the NHL instituted a shootout system in 2005 as a fail-safe means of determining a winner. If the overtime period ends in a tie, a series of penalty-style shots determines the game.

A tie is still a possible outcome in an NFL game, though it's rare. The last NFL tie occurred between the Eagles and Bengals in 2008, and before that, between the Falcons and Steelers in 2002. It's so rare, after the '08 tie Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb confessed that he didn't even know an NFL game was allowed to end in a tie.

The argument in favor of the current NFL overtime system says that it has rarely failed to decide games. That's true, but it's also true that football possessions are completely apples and oranges when compared to hockey possessions.

In a hockey overtime period, both teams are likely going to have multiple opportunities to take possession of the puck and create a scoring chance. In football, there is no face-off. There is a coin toss, kickoff, and the receiving team takes the ball and drives it down the field. If the offense is successful and the team's kicker has a strong leg, the team that loses the coin toss will never get a scoring chance. The probability of an win-loss outcome is high, but the system is inherently not fair. Both team battled through 60 grueling minutes to reach overtime, and the outcome can hinge on what side of the coin is facing upward.

In the interest of fairness, the sudden-death format isn't the best fit for a game like football. There are other ways to handle overtime games, methods that can produce definite outcomes while allowing each team to have a reasonable chance to win. Let's take a look at a few of them. Some are more practical, some are a little more creative.

Sudden death -- first team to six points

This method is the one I tend to favor. It takes the current overtime rules and eliminates the "win the coin toss, drive the ball and kick the field goal" scenario, which is the most damning argument against the current NFL overtime setup.

In a nutshell, if you win the coin toss and don't want to give the ball to the other team, you need to score a touchdown. If you kick a field goal, the other team still gets the ball back. If they score a touchdown, they win. If they kick a field goal or fail to score, you get the ball a second time. From there, if you can kick a second field goal, you win.

The setup doesn't completely eliminate the kicker from the game's outcome, but it makes the kicker a less pivotal player. It also encourages teams to drive for the end zone instead of field goal range.

Ultimately, this method ensures that if a team succeeds in preventing the other team from having an overtime possession, it's because they earned it by putting the ball in the end zone. If neither team can get the ball into the end zone, field goals can still determine the outcome, but it would be a more difficult task than under the current rules.

College rules

Sometimes called the "Kansas Plan," this is the method made famous after it was adopted by the NCAA. It's also used in various forms by the Canadian Football League and high schools in states around the U.S.

Essentially, it's a hockey shootout adopted to football. Offenses take possession of the ball at attempt to outscore each other in rounds of drives that usually start deep in the opponent's territory. In NCAA-sanctioned college football, the drives start at the defense's 25-yard line. If your offense is on the field in the top half of the first round and you score a touchdown, the other team has to match your touchdown in the bottom half of the round or you win the game.

If you kick a field goal in the top half of the round, you must keep the other team to a field goal or less in the bottom of the round. If the other team answers your field goal with a touchdown, you lose.

The NCAA alternates which team goes first in each round. After the second overtime round, if a winner has not yet emerged, extra points are ruled out and teams must go for two-point conversions after touchdowns. Interceptions and fumble recoveries can be returned for scores by the defense per NCAA rules, but in high school, turnovers usually result in a dead ball and the end of the possession.

This method of overtime makes for great TV. Every football fan in Ohio remembers Ohio State's thrilling, pressure-packed overtime win against Miami in the 2002 national title game. The only trouble is, if overtime goes four or five rounds, the final score and final statistics can really get thrown out of whack.

What was a tightly-contested 17-17 game in regulation can suddenly sprawl into a 45-38 final in which the second-rated defensive team in the league plummets to ninth based on giving up three or four short-field touchdowns in overtime. The NFL values its stats and rankings, and defensive coordinators around the league probably wouldn't be keen on the idea of an offense-biased overtime that has the potential to kill a defense's reputation.

It's a little different in college ball, where dominant defensive teams are few and far between. But in the NFL, where many teams pride themselves on their defense, this style of overtime has hand grenade potential in league meetings.

Move the kickoff spot up to the 40 yard line

This setup would move the kickoff spot up 10 yards from normal regulation kickoffs, which are booted from the 30 yard line. The idea is to increase touchbacks and regularly pin offenses deep in their own territory, which would presumably make it more difficult for a team to take the opening kickoff and immediately drive into field goal range. Putting the offense on a long field increases the probability of fourth-down punts, and therefore, changes in possession.

Here's the problem: If the team that fields the opening kickoff returns the ball to the 10-yard line and the ensuing drive nets little to no additional yardage, that team would then be forced to punt from deep in their own territory, or even their own end zone. Unless the punter uncorks an 80-yard cannon shot downfield, there is a good chance the other team will take over with favorable field position to -- guess what? -- take the ball, drive into field goal range and win the game.

In a roundabout way, it penalizes the team that wins the overtime coin flip. And in the event that the team receiving the opening kickoff is able to pick up a couple of first downs but the drive stalls, the other team is likely taking possession deep in their own territory, setting up a see-saw of drives beginning deep in the offense's territory, and reducing the chances of a scoring opportunity.

The object is to make overtime fair, not kill all scoring chances.

Five-minute periods, with rotating kickoffs

This is sort of a modified shootout format. The clock doesn't stop, so team that wins the opening kickoff doesn't have a lot of time to drive the ball into field goal range. They're basically forced into a hurry-up offense from the outset. If either team fails to score in five minutes, the clock expires and the team that received the first-overtime kickoff must then kick the ball off to the other team at the outset of the next overtime period.

It increases the chance of each team having at least one possession, but this is also a tiring way to run overtime. It's basically a series of five-minute sprints until someone scores. By the fourth or fifth overtime, offenses and defenses would begin to succumb to fatigue, increasing the possibility of injuries and, in hot weather, dehydration.

Full overtime period, followed by a field goal "shootout"

Want to put the game at the feet of the kickers? Make them an absolute last resort. Play a full 15-minute overtime period without sudden-death rules. If the game is still tied at the end of that period, do what the NHL does and decide the game with a shootout. Or in this case, a "kick-out."

Pick a field goal distance that is makeable for NFL kickers, but not a slam dunk. Say 45 yards. Each team lines up, 11-on-11, and attempts one field goal. If both kickers make or miss their attempts, the shootout goes to a second round with the order alternated. If both kickers make their attempts, the line of scrimmage is pushed back a couple of yards, requiring a 47 or 48 yard attempt. If the game still isn't decided, a couple additional yards of distance, and a 50-yard attempt. And so on, until a winner is determined.

If both kickers miss in a given round, the distance stays the same for the next round.

By the time the distance reaches 55 yards and beyond, a missed field goal is only a matter of time.

If you don't like putting kickers in such a powerful position, this isn't the overtime setup for you. But then again, how is it really different from the current overtime rules?

Fighting back

Over the span of an 82-game NBA regular season, the statements made in December and January are generally lost by the time the winter ice thaws.

By the time warm weather arrives and the league's playoff brackets have been pared down to a final four, the battles of wintertime are pages in dusty, seldom-opened history books.

With that in mind, what the Cavs did to the Lakers in two regular season meetings this year could have little to no bearing on what might happen should the teams, who lead their respective conferences, meet again in the NBA Finals.

And yet, it's hard to deny that something happened in these two games, spaced a little under a month apart.

Cleveland won both games, 102-87 on Christmas Day in Los Angeles and 93-87 at The Q this past week. It's a feel-good story for the Cavs. They lost both matchups against the Lakers a year ago, and there is reason to believe that, had they made it past Orlando in the Eastern Conference finals, the undersized Cavs would have been overmatched by the long, limber and skilled frontcourt of the Lakers.

This year, a physically bigger and noticeably more determined Cavs team overpowered the Lakers for about six of a possible eight quarters of basketball.

But the Cavs beat the Spurs twice in the 2006-07 season. It didn't prevent a dominating sweep at the hands of San Antonio in the '07 Finals. So why should we look upon these two wins as anything more than a couple of regular season wins that allow Cleveland fans to puff out their normally-sunken chests a little more than usual?

Because it is entirely possible that the Cavs are to the Lakers what the Lakers were to the Cavs last year -- the worst kind of matchup. And it's entirely possible that fact is not lost on the Lakers.

For all of their versatility and talent, the Lakers do have a potentially-fatal flaw that can be exploited by the right kind of team. The Lakers can be out-muscled, physically overpowered. And when that happens, they tend to go numb. Instead of battling harder, they become frustrated.

Basketball pundits -- certainly those from the L.A. area -- chalked the Christmas shellacking handed out by the Cavs to a hungry challenger facing a reigning champion that didn't take the game as seriously as it should have.

There is an element of truth to that. The Lakers were sitting pretty. The Cavs were trying to avenge last year's embarrassment. Sometimes, you just can't manufacture enough motivation. The Cavs kept momentum on their side by winning hustle play after hustle play. And then -- at least in the minds of the L.A. crowd -- the refs starting jobbing the Lakers, which led to a shower of foam fingers from the stands as the fans in attendance made complete jackasses of themselves.

It was an ugly loss for the Lakers. And what do you do with an ugly loss in the middle of the season? You learn your lessons, wash your hands of it and move on.

A successful veteran team like the Lakers, the defending world champs and two-time defending Western Conference champs, would almost certainly use a loss like that to jolt themselves awake, make the necessary tactical and mental-preparation adjustments, and be ready for the rematch with the Cavs four weeks later.

At the outset of the rematch, the Lakers did look a lot more prepared mentally. They raced out to a 9-0 lead and stretched the lead out to as many as 11 in the first half. The Cavs made their runs, but the Lakers kept out-maneuvering Cleveland, getting buckets when they needed them and maintaining their lead into the third quarter.

But then, that "something" from up-column happened. Something clicked into place. No one knows exactly when it happened, but the Cavs started to impose their will on the game. With Mo Williams on the sideline with a sprained shoulder, with tall, athletic swingman Jamario Moon also injured, with Delonte West giving the Cavs virtually nothing thanks to suffocating defense from Kobe Bryant, the Cavs still managed to dictate the game to the Lakers as the second half wore on.

The Cavs took their first lead at 60-59 in the third quarter, and the Lakers started to submit to what the Cavs were throwing at them. Specifically, a relentless physical assault in the paint and a whole lot of LeBron.

The Lakers didn't try to fight back with muscle. They hit some three-pointers that kept a win within grasp, but they really didn't have an answer -- or try to find an answer -- for Cleveland's power game.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign for the Cavs is that they won at a playoff pace. In the fourth quarter, the game slowed into a deliberately-paced cross between a chess match and Greco-Roman wrestling. Both teams tried to control the ball and use the shot clock. It wasn't pretty. But it was intense.

If you took the second game between the Cavs and Lakers and dropped it into the middle of June, it would find itself right at home. Or at least the Cavs would. The Lakers, they might need to do some remodeling.

After the game, both Bryant and Phil Jackson addressed the Lakers' lack of physical presence, specifically pointing the finger at Pau Gasol. The skilled seven-footer is supposed to serve as the most vexing interior matchup problem any team has to face when game-planning for the Lakers.

Gasol ended up with 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting. That's following his 11-point, 4-of-10 effort on Christmas Day.

As much as Shaq was never designed to defend the pick and roll, Gasol was never designed to play mosh-pit basketball. His greatest strength lies in his post moves around the hoop, not in his ability to muscle the ball onto the rim. He can go around and over, but seldom through, his defender. When he's being guarded by the human wall that is Shaq, the mismatches are evident.

The Cavs won the rematch by winning the game in the paint. With Leon Powe slated to come back after the all star break, and the door open for Danny Ferry to acquire another forward before the Feb. 18 trade deadline, the Cavs' grip on interior basketball could strengthen as the playoffs approach.

As for the Lakers, everything is relative. In the Western Conference, they are the bullies on the block. Surrounded by mostly finesse teams, they have unparalleled size and strength in being able to trot out Gasol, Andrew Bynum, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest. The vast majority of teams in the league don't have an answer for that challenge. Last year, the Cavs were among that vast majority.

This year, armed with Shaq, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, an improved Anderson Varejao and the potential future contributions of Powe, the Cavs are one of the few teams that can give the Lakers fits.

It's not a guarantee of beating the Lakers four times in seven, if that's the matchup come June. But the Lakers have now seen the new-look Cavs -- bigger, stronger, tougher -- and they don't like it one bit, whether they admit to it or not.

That, in and of itself, is something to file away for later in the year.

Power hungry

With Thursday's game in Utah, the Cavaliers will have reached the midpoint of the 2009-10 season. Next Monday, January 18, will mark one month and counting until the NBA's trade deadline.

In the often-referenced words of Yogi Berra, it gets late early around here.

For the Cavs, a team pulling out all the stops to try and win the NBA title this spring, time is especially of the essence. Danny Ferry isn't just trying to win a championship. He's making his closing arguments to LeBron James, who will dive headfirst into the free agent waters on July 1. Ferry has to show LeBron that the Cavs are capable of fielding not just a championship contender, but a championship favorite kind of team -- one of the two or three teams each year that sits on the league's ruling council. At or near 60 wins, a top-two conference seed and a regular participant in the late May and June playoff rounds.

A general manager's ability to piece together that kind of team is often governed by circumstances he largely can't control. Primarily, money and opportunity. A GM needs access to well-stocked coffers supplied by the team's owner, and he needs other GMs who want to make a deal.

In the past two years, Ferry has turned Dan Gilbert's money and several trade opportunities into Delonte West, Mo Williams and Shaquille O'Neal. This summer, after acquiring Shaq, he took the free agent money that Ron Artest and Trevor Ariza turned down, and used it to sign Anthony Parker and Jamario Moon.

The Cavs roster is more athletic and versatile than it was even a year ago. Over the past two years, through several rounds of trades and opportunistic signings, the Cavs have done a lot to close the talent gap on the likes of the Lakers, Magic and Celtics.

But when you're trying to win a title and keep your everything-star from seriously considering flying the coop, the roster is subject to a few extra layers of scrutiny from eyes both inside and outside the organization. Every scratch, dent, pit, chip and dimple is held up to the light and examined for its championship-derailing potential.

For the Cavs, the eyes keep going to one area on the floor in particular: The power forward position.

J.J. Hickson has started there for most of the season. He's a second-year player, and while he has demonstrated tremendous athletic ability at times, he also coasts through long stretches of games, sometimes looking lost on the floor, sometimes just looking like he's not all that interested in competing hard.

No one player has probably made Mike Brown's blood pressure rise more this season than Hickson. He's benched Hickson for remainders of games after a mental goof, usually at the defensive end. Sometimes Hickson responds well, but often, the message seems to whistle over his head.

Hickson isn't a bad apple. But he is out of place as the starting power forward on this team. He's working on remedial coursework while the veterans on the team are enrolled in the doctoral program. Honestly, Hickson probably belongs on a young, rebuilding team where he can grow with players who are similar in age, with a coach who can afford to keep playing him through his mistakes.

The Cavs' situation is simply too high-pressure for the team to live with Hickson's growing pains, particularly as the stretch run and playoffs approach.

The other option is starting Anderson Varejao alongside Shaq, which Brown tried at the outset of the year. But Varejao seems to be at his best when he's coming off the bench as a change of pace. His game most closely resembles that of a center, anyway. Outside of the paint, he's really not much of a scoring threat.

That leaves an outside acquisition as the only other means of upgrading the power forward spot between now and the deadline. Ferry apparently has recognized the need for a legitimate starting big forward, and all signs point to him being aggressive in attempting to make a trade in the next month.

But Ferry has to find a dance partner before he can make a trade. Fortunately, there are a few teams that might be willing to give the Cavs a starting forward for the right price. And thanks to the expiring contract of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, the Cavs would be able to pay the price.

Here are a few of the options Ferry might conisder:

Antawn Jamison, Washington Wizards

He's by far the player the Cavs -- and the fans -- want the most. At 6'-8" and about 235 pounds, Jamison is actually something of a small forward-power forward combo. He was utilized mostly as a small forward during earlier-career stops in Golden State and Dallas, but switched exclusively to the four-spot after arriving in Washington, where he's in his sixth season with the team.

Jamison is 33, so he's not as spry and athletic as he used to be. But he's aged gracefully, all things considered. He has managed to stay away from major injuries throughout his career and has kept himself in great shape, so he plays younger than his age.

The most attractive aspect of Jamison is the balance of his game. He really has no fundamental weaknesses for a player at his position. He can spot up and shoot jumpers with range out to three-point territory, he can put the ball on the floor both facing the basket and posting up, he can defend bigger players and he rebounds.

To boot, he's one of the game's really good guys. In the midst of the recent Gilbert Arenas gun flap -- which included a widely-circulated picture of Arenas making a pistol-gesture with his fingers while other players, Jamison included, laughed -- it was Jamison who stepped up, apologized for the picture and appealed to Wizards fans to keep supporting the team.

In short, Jamison is the kind of guy you'd never not want on your team. That's the biggest problem where the Cavs are concerned. The Wizards appear to be on the precipice of a major rebuild, so whether they can get the league to void the remainder Arenas' contract or not, the logical plan of attack would be to start trading off veterans for younger players and more cap flexibility down the road. But the Wizards are so hungry for good PR right now, they might view Jamsion as the guy they need to be the face of their franchise until his contract ends in two more seasons.

If the Wizards did decide to trade Jamison to the Cavs, Z's expiring contract and Hickson would likely be theirs. Even if Washington GM Ernie Grunfeld abhors the idea of trading Jamison to the team that tormented the Wizards in the playoffs for three straight years, that's still a pretty good haul for a team looking to get younger and cheaper.

Troy Murphy, Indiana Pacers

This might actually end up becoming the most likely trade scenario for the Cavs. Some fans will undoubtely be upset if the trade deadline yields Murphy instead of Jamison, but the truth is, Murphy might be the most readily-available power forward out there for a team like Cleveland.

The Pacers probably wouldn't try to extort a king's ransom for Murphy. Rumors have swirled that Murphy isn't all that happy with Pacers management, and he's not a centerpiece player for Indiana in the same way Jamison is for the Wizards. He's owed about $12 million next year, and it's entirely possible that the non-contending Pacers would take an expiring deal in return just to get him off their books.

Murphy isn't the dynamic all-around player that Jamison is, but he does bring some assets to the table that fit what the Cavs need. He's a "stretch four" -- a power forward with three-point range on his shot, who will force opposing big men to venture out of the paint to contest shots. The benefit of having a big man who can shoot from long range is that it opens up more operating space for Shaq inside. Throughout his career, Shaq's teams have always had the most success with him when they could pair him with a perimeter-shooting power forward.

Murphy will rebound to the tune of eight to nine a game, so he's not adverse to going inside and mixing it up a bit. He's slow afoot and not regarded as a good defender, but Brown once got Sasha Pavlovic to play good defense in stretches. After that, I believe anything is possible.

At 6'-11", adding Murphy is virtually like adding another seven-footer to the roster. Against teams with other tall frontcourts, like the Lakers and Magic, the more height, the better. And if none of that fits Murphy into the Cavs' long-term plans, his $12 million expiring could become a major trade chip for next year's deadline.

David West, New Orleans Hornets

The Hornets have been on every media member's short list of teams most likely to blow up the roster and start over. The Hornets have been among the NBA's biggest disappointments for going on two years and a rebuild appears inevitable.

If that's the case, West will likely be among the first out the door since he can fetch both cap relief and young talent in return.

West was a 20-point, eight-rebound player heading into this season. This year, however, he's attempting more than two fewer shots per game over last year, and his scoring average is down to 17.5 per game. Still very good, but not trending in the right direction.

There is a school of thought shared by members of the media and message board communities that says West is riding the coattails of Chris Paul, benefitting from the attention paid to Paul by defenses, combining it with a consistent midrange jumper, and using it all to masquerade as a borderline-elite scoring forward. West has some obvious scoring talent, but he was a bit player prior to Paul's arrival. You can look up his career stats and be the judge.

LeBron could have much the same effect on West, and he would certainly be an upgrade over what the Cavs current trot out at the power forward. But there are better options out there.

Mehmet Okur, Utah Jazz

At this point, it's a stretch to think Utah would start shedding salary. They're still in the playoff hunt in the Western Conference. But if Utah did decide to punt away a big contract to save some money, Okur would be high on their list. He makes $9 million this year, and is signed for two more years.

Okur is a step down from even Murphy as an overall player, especially if the Cavs were to play him at power forward. But Okur does fit the stretch-four mold. He is a 6'-11" natural center who can step back and shoot the three. He's a career 37.8 percent three point shooter, and shooting the longball at a 39-percent clip this season. If you need a catch-and-shoot three-point gunner with height, Okur can fit the mold.

While we're on the subject of the Jazz, let's get the Carlos Boozer thing out of the way now: No. He has an expiring contract, the Cavs have an expiring contract to trade, so that's not going to work -- even if the hatchet has been completely buried and forgotten from Boozer's defection in the summer of '04.

Zach Randolph, Memphis Grizzlies

If all else fails, why not take a stab? He's insane and locker-room powder keg, but he's having a monster season, averaging 20 points and 11 rebounds per game. A motivated Z-Bo is an absolute beast on the block.

The Grizzlies are actually one of the surprises of the league so far. They're in the playoff hunt, and that alone will probably keep Randolph off the market. But if Memphis suddenly falls out of contention and wants to trade Randolph, and if the Cavs have had nothing but doors slammed in their face on their power forward quest, maybe Z-Bo fits in some kind of freaky, alternate-universe kind of way.

A delicate situation

It would be so easy for Josh Cribbs to look like the good guy in his contract dispute with the Browns.

He has been told to play the role of the good soldier on numerous occasions. The ongoing message from Browns management -- in all its changing forms -- to Cribbs has been "Do what is asked of you, and we'll take care of you when the time is right."

Cribbs has done all that and one heck of a lot more, last month virtually dragging the Browns to their first win over the Steelers in six years. With an NFL record eight career kickoff returns for touchdowns to go with punt return scores and a mastery of the kick coverage game, Cribbs has already cemented himself as quite possibly the greatest non-kicking special teams player the league has ever seen. His playmaking ability out of the "wildcat" formation on offense is an extension of the quick moves and superb field vision he displays on kick returns.

He is, quite simply, a unique talent. You can certainly make a case that within the past half-decade, Cribbs and left tackle Joe Thomas have already staked their claim as the best Browns players of the expansion era.

Now, Cribbs wants his salary to match his accomplishments and abilities. No harm there. Three years ago, he signed a six-year, $6.8 million deal that included a $2 million signing bonus. For a young player who was signed as an undrafted free agent from Kent State in 2005, that was big money and big-time security.

But this year, with Cribbs a certifiable NFL star, the $600,000 he made this year looks relatively paltry. He wants starting receiver money, like Chicago's Devin Hester -- one of the few return men in the league who is in Cribbs' class. Hester signed a four-year deal in 2008 worth up to $40 million. But Hester has been exactly that this year -- a starting receiver. Cribbs flopped as a starting receiver, and outside of kick returns and coverages, is relegated to taking direct snaps a few times a game.

Cribbs began to make waves over his contract in the second half of the season. He put a self-dictated end-of-season deadline on getting a new deal. That didn't happen. Then Mike Holmgren officially began his job as the new team president, and Cribbs knew the man he needed to talk to was in town.

One of the first acts of the Holmgren regime was indeed to offer Cribbs a new contract. But it wasn't anything close to what Cribbs and his agents had in mind. The Browns reportedly put an offer on the table worth about $1.4 million per year.

Better than $600,000? Certainly. The type of money that a game-changer like Cribbs should be making in the NFL? Probably not.

Which is why Cribbs could have very easily spun this situation 100 percent in his favor within the court of public opinion.

It was a lowball offer. It was insulting, as Cribbs' agents declared. It reeked of a new management regime hastily shoving an offer across the table to see if Cribbs would bite. If the Browns were going to make that kind of an offer to a guy who has been one of the team's very few consistent high performers for the last five years, they probably needed to just table discussions until Holmgren could hire his general manager and the club's big thinkers could come up with a better plan.

But the only person who might be handling this worse than any member of the Browns is Cribbs himself.

If he wants to threaten a holdout, fine. If he wants to threaten to demand a trade, fine. Even Hester did that prior to signing his new deal. Unfortunately, in the NFL's contract negotiating system, which is decidedly antiquated in a lot of ways, raising a fuss is the only way a player can generate any leverage.

But maybe the fuss should be saved primarily for team management. Instead, Cribbs is spewing histrionics via his Twitter account and any microphone that can pick up his voice. This past week, when he showed up at the team's Berea headquarters to clear out his locker for the season, he told the assembled media that he believe he had played his last game for the Browns. He told the media that he said his permanent good-byes to the team training and medical staff.

On Twitter, his comments have included "I don't believe I made the to do list for the team in 2010" and "I just hate being taken advantage of ... What else is new?"

There is a lot of water left to tread between where the Cribbs-Browns negotiations sit, and the irreconcilable differences that could lead to a trade. Chances are still very good that he and the Browns will be able to find a common ground and Cribbs will be in uniform, if not for organized team activities this spring, then for training camp in July. This isn't even close to over.

Which is why Cribbs declaring his relationship with the Browns over and done with, and doing it publicly time and again, seems a little less like hardball negotiating tactics and more like a petulant grade-schooler storming up to his room and slamming the door.

Cribbs is trying to get the fans and the media opinion columnists to come down hard on the Browns under the threat of having to watch him play for another team. But facts are facts. Cribbs is under contract, he has no legal way under NFL rules to force the Browns' hand into giving him a raise or trading him, and Holmgren hasn't yet hired a GM. The GM would logically be the executive who would handle contracts and salaries, not Holmgren.

Maybe there was no good way out of this for the Browns. Maybe if they tell Cribbs to sit tight a little while longer while Holmgren hires a GM and pieces together his management team, Cribbs gets impatient and we arrive at the same Tweets and media spout-offs that have occurred this past week.

But after watching the Browns disgracefully lowball Cribbs, and then watch Cribbs throw a multimedia temper tantrum, I'm beginning to think stall tactics are the approach Holmgren should have used.

The Browns' front office, under construction yet again, is apparently in no shape to carry forth high-pressure contract negotiations at the moment. So they shouldn't have tried.

And for Cribbs, a simple "no" followed by a simple, privately-delivered "I'm not coming back here without a new deal" would have sufficed. Act like the experienced veteran you want your salary to reflect. Not like a sniveling rookie being told to run laps for the first time.

Weighing the options

By the time you read this, you may already know Eric Mangini's fate as Browns coach. The situations is fluid, and changeable by the hour.

By as the hours have gone by this week, the one constant has been uncertainty. New team president Mike Holmgren appeared in front of the cameras at his first official Browns press conference on Tuesday, essentially saying that he'd like to have a decision on Mangini's future soon. But not too soon. It could be by the end of the week. Or maybe he extends his self-imposed deadline for more consultation, maybe a subsequent meeting with the team's first-year (and possibly last-year) coach.

As we slog through the murky swamp that has become Mangini's Browns future, we can't help but wonder whether even Holmgren himself was anticipating this touch-and-go decision process.

When Holmgren agreed to take the reins of the franchise a couple of weeks ago, he might have had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to proceed. Which is to say, his own coach and his own general manager. The type of organization Holmgren wanted to build here -- rooted in his Bill Walsh-based upbringing as a coach -- is in stark contrast to Mangini's background, heavily influenced by Bill Belichick, who is a branch on the Bill Parcells coaching tree.

On top of that, the results produced by Mangini offered no reference that favored keeping his job. When Holmgren took the job on Dec. 21, the Browns had just won back to back games against Pittsburgh and Kansas City, but they still stood at a bottom-feeding 3-11.

Heroic performances by Josh Cribbs and Jerome Harrison aside, the decision for Holmgren was as easy as a snap of the fingers. Season ends, Mangini gets his walking papers, and Holmgren sets about finding a coach and GM who have the same football philosophies that he does.

But we're talking about the Browns here. It can never be that simple. Something with tentacles always comes along and inks the water.

The ink cloud came in the form of the season's final two games, against Oakland and Jacksonville. The Browns won both games. You could even say they won both games convincingly. The Raiders definitely aided their own demise with serial personal fouls in a 23-9 Browns win, but it was still a game the Browns pretty much controlled start to finish.

In the season finale last Sunday, the Browns jumped out to an early 10-point lead over the Jaguars and seemed to control the flow and pace of the game for 60 minutes. The final score read 23-17, but it wasn't quite that close.

In short, taken purely within its own context, December 2009/January 2010 was the Browns' most successful month of the expansion era. Four wins, one loss, and that loss to San Diego way back on December 6 contained a furious fourth-quarter rally that fell short. The month contained their first four-game winning streak since 1994 and their first four-game streak of 160-plus rushing yards since 1968.

Production appeared from all directions. The accomplishments of Cribbs and Harrison are well-documented, but the Browns also received noteworthy contributions from lesser-known names on defense, like Matt Roth, Marcus Benard and Ahtyba Rubin. Joe Thomas and Alex Mack continues to grow as current and future stalwarts of the offensive line. Lawrence Vickers played a key role in helping Harrison roll up a series of 100-yard rushing efforts.

The Browns came together in the season's final month. You can say it was because of Mangini or in spite of Mangini, but the key fact is that Mangini was presiding, and it has forced Holmgren to soften his stance on how he wants to move forward.

Holmgren has to consider both the pluses and minuses of keeping Mangini on board, even for just next season, with no guarantee afterward. When laying everything out on the table, here are the factors Holmgren has to be looking at:

Why Mangini should stay:

1. Maybe Mangini was right all along

Maybe it is a process. Maybe it took almost a year for Mangini to instill his own brand of discipline on a resistant roster. Maybe it took that long to weed out some of the dissenters and negative influences like Braylon Edwards, Kellen Winslow and Jamal Lewis. Maybe going from Club Romeo to something resembling a real NFL team was actually this difficult.

If that is the case, it would be a setback to stomp the sprouts growing from the seeds Mangini has sowed in the past year.

2. Mangini grew as a coach this year

At times, it's easy to forget that Mangini is only 38 -- a tyke by NFL head coaching standards. He's still growing in his job as much as his players are. And he underwent a great deal of growth this season.

Mangini came to town like a tornado. Fresh off the ego rush of being given total control of the football operations by Randy Lerner, Mangini quickly became enthralled with the idea of himself as an authoritarian ruler. His disciplinary tactics were heavy-handed (who can forget the story from the preseason, when Mangini reportedly fined a player $1,700 for not paying for a bottle of hotel water?). He was aloof toward the media. He grated on players. Jamal Lewis criticized Mangini for allowing too much contact in practice. Rookie running back James Davis was lost for the season due to a shoulder injury on a post-practice contact drill that was reportedly approved by Mangini.

But Mangini's attitude seemed to soften considerably when GM George Kokinis parted ways with the team in November. Kokinis alleged that Mangini went over his head on personnel decisions, including the Edwards trade, effectively undermining Kokinis' decision-making power over the roster. Kokinis, a longtime associate of Mangini going back to their days as interns with the Belichick Browns, was escorted from headquarters in Berea, which tends to make you think he had some choice words for Mangini on his way out the door.

With his GM gone, the losses piling up and speculation rampant that he was doomed to be a one-and-done coach in Cleveland, Mangini seemed to shift from a dictator with a grand scheme to a coach just trying to win each Sunday and save his job.

Perhaps, over the course of the season, Mangini went from being the team, to being a team player. If that's the case, the idea of keeping him around for another year becomes a lot more palatable.

3. Rob Ryan

In the end, this probably won't be anything that Holmgren considers when deciding Mangini's fate, but hiring Ryan as defensive coordinator is easily the best personnel move Mangini has made. Ryan looks like a cross between Santa Claus and a drifter, but he's inherited the defensive smarts of his dad, Buddy Ryan. And he's a passionate leader, which players latch onto. Ryan has taken a defense of mostly no-names and gotten them to play over their heads on more than one occasion this season -- most notably in the win over the Steelers.

The stats might not bear it out, but Ryan is an excellent defensive coordinator. Unfortunately, if Mangini goes, Ryan probably goes, too.

Why Mangini should go:

1. Differences in team-building and coaching philosophies

Obviously, the most glaring reason why Holmgren and Mangini can't coexist. You don't hire a French instructor to teach a Spanish class. And that's the essential difference between Holmgren's football background and Mangini's. It's no one's fault. It's just a fact of life in this situation.

2. Should the last month really make up for the previous 11?

The ledger still says Mangini did a lot more wrong than right over the past year. The draft netted Alex Mack and Mohamed Massaquoi, who both look like keepers. But for a team that was slated to pick fifth overall, Mangini's trade-down draft strategy looks like an overall goof. David Veikune, a non-contributor taken in the second round, is the poster boy for Mangini's draft-day ineptitude.

You could make a case that Mangini bungled the quarterback competition in training camp, waiting way too long to name a starter. And there is no question that there was a major communication breakdown between he and Kokinis over personnel authority, which led to the breakdown of their relationship.

3. Star search

Mangini doesn't like to deal with the egos of star players. He'd rather build a team of role players that is greater than the sum of its parts. Holmgren's background includes the likes of Joe Montana, Steve Young and Brett Favre. He wants stars, particularly at quarterback.

Asking Mangini, who can come off as aloof at times and has well-documented shortcomings as a communicator, to oversee an egotistical starting quarterback who needs equal parts butt-kicking and shoulder-massaging, might not be the best idea. As we saw in '08, when Favre and Mangini attempted to coexist with the Jets. It was the last season for both QB and coach in that organization.

The new czar in town

Mike Holmgren is coming to town. Monday, after nearly a week of meetings and suspense, he accepted the role of Browns team president.

If you want a team czar with football chops, a guy who has won everywhere he's gone, a guy who was a leader -- not a support staffer -- on a Super Bowl winner, Holmgren is your man.

That's good news. But that's not the best news. The best news is who Holmgren is slated to replace as team president.

No, not Mike Keenan. He's the team's main business operations guy, and will transition to the role of chief financial officer.

I'm talking about Randy Lerner.

For way too long now, Lerner has been the Browns' football czar by default. As the team's owner, it has ultimately been up to him to staff the president's, general manager's and head coach's positions. In an organizational setup than began with the hiring of John Collins in 2004 and survived through inertia to this year, the team president was not technically part of the football chain of command, instead leaning more toward the business side of the operation. That removed another layer of authority between the owner and the general manager.

As a result, Lerner's inadequate administrative thumbprint has been all-too-visible on the Browns for the past seven years. From Collins to Phil Savage to Romeo Crennel to Eric Mangini, Lerner kept hiring decision-makers who were untested in, and ultimately proven to be ill-suited for, their job descriptions.

Every Lerner football hire has been a step-up hire. Savage from scouting director to GM. Crennel from coordinator to coach. Mangini was the coach who would be czar, but he turned out to be a very weak czar, so the job fell back to Lerner.

Holmgren is a step-up hire, too. He's never been a team president. But his history in spotlight positions -- and success in those spotlight positions -- suggests that this hire will be a little different.

As team president, Holmgren's job is going to primarily consist of looking at things from the business-cliche "30,000 foot level." His job will be one of vision, team-building and delegation. At first, he might be more involved in the relative minutiae of deciding who should occupy the 53rd spot on the roster, who makes the final cut in training camp and how to best utilize Josh Cribbs. But over time, he'll have his GM and coach making those judgment calls.

Ultimately, Holmgren is in place to eradicate a firmly-entrenched losing culture by installing a system of leadership based on structure, accountability, discipline, and a cultivating a winning attitude from the GM's chair down to the practice squad.

It's something the Browns haven't had in a long, long time: an umbrella-type leader who rules over the Berea facility with an authoritative air. Someone to build standards and a strategic plan for the future, and make sure everyone is living up to that plan. If someone isn't, there are consequences ready and waiting.

With Lerner splitting his time and attention among Cleveland, Long Island and Birmingham, England, and not really having a dominant personality to begin with, he is ill-suited for the role of organizational godfather. Savage survived a coup d'etat of sorts from Collins, leaving him as the organizational go-to guy, but it was evident over the ensuing years that A) his people skills were lacking and B) he was mostly at home in a rental car, jaunting between college towns to scout next year's draft class.

Mangini also has issues with his people skills, and at 38 and with just three previous years as a head coach under his belt, was not experienced enough for the task of singlehandedly running an NFL franchise.

The result was what you'd expect when no one is adequately steering the ship. The often-mentioned "rudderless suck" that has defined the Browns for the past 10 years.

That's the real value of Holmgren. It's not really in his ability to coach X's and O's -- unless he at some point names himself coach, in what would be a pretty blatant mistake on Holmgren's part.

It's not his ability to run a draft-day war room, his roster management, his ability to make trades and free agent signings, or his ability to groom Brady Quinn as an NFL passer.

Holmgren's real value to the Browns, the area in which he needs to succeed above all others, is in finding guys to do all of the above. And then finding guys to replace those guys when they are inevitably hired away by other teams, because you've become one of the league's model franchises and everyone is trying to emulate you.

That's how teams like the Patriots, Colts and Steelers leave the rest of us scratching our heads at their year-in, year-out success, with their ability to take seemingly no-name players and coaches and turn them into hot properties.

It's all in the organizing of the organization. And organization is what the Browns have lacked since returning to the league.

With Holmgren on board, we can now envision a world where Lerner can ping-pong from Long Island to Cleveland to England and back, make sporadic appearances in Berea and at games, hide from the media's microphones, enjoy an afternoon brandy, whatever he wants. And no Browns fan needs to care because Lerner's involvement in the football operations extends only to his writing hand, which he uses to sign the checks.

I don't know about you, but that's a world I can't wait to live in.

A win that's worth the price

At this point in the Browns' seasons, wins are the enemy.

Wins drop you in the draft order. Wins keep Eric Mangini employed, and might even convince Randy Lerner that it's OK to move forward with Mangini as the primary personnel decision-maker.

When you're 1-11 and four games away from euthanizing, burying and forgetting about this season, wins do nothing but provide false hope and impede long-term progress.

On Thursday, the Browns won. They likely did most or all of the above -- deprive themselves of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft, secure Mangini as the coach at the outset of next season, possibly cause Lerner to hold off on hiring a general manager, and made the fans hope, however so slightly, that maybe some faint pulses of light are filtering through the fog that has entrapped this franchise for way too long.

Against 30 other teams, it would have been a meaningless win that did exactly what the evidence says it did -- more harm than good.

But this wasn't the other 30 teams. This was the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If you've lived on either side of this border rivalry between two cities separated by less than 150 miles of interstate, you know the history. Recently, it hasn't been much of a rivalry. The Browns had lost 12 straight to the Steelers, the last win coming at Heinz Field on Oct. 5, 2003.

How long ago was that? The following month, Michigan beat Ohio State 35-21 for their last victory over the Buckeyes to date. That's how long ago.

The Browns hadn't beaten the Steelers in Cleveland since Sept. 17, 2000. How long ago was that? A rookie from Penn State named Courtney Brown was the star of the game with three sacks.

There were excruciating near misses over that span. A 16-13 overtime loss in 2002, when the Steelers had a would-be game winning field goal blocked, but the ball stayed behind the line of scrimmage, allowing for a recovery and successful re-kick. A wild card playoff game at the end of that season in which the Browns held a 17-point second half lead, only to let it evaporate and lose, 36-33. A last-minute Willie Parker touchdown in 2006. A missed Phil Dawson 52-yard field goal attempt in 2007, which would have tied the game as time expired.

There were blowouts, too. Since returning to the NFL in 1999, the Browns have been blanked by the Steelers four times, by scores of 43-0, 22-0, 41-0 and 31-0. They held the Browns to seven points or less another five times.

But the biggest discrepancy of all: over that span, the Steelers have won two Super Bowls. The Browns have managed two winning seasons.

It's been a long, strange, crazy, heartbreaking, confusing, frustrating road for the Browns these past 10 years. The twice-yearly beatings at the hands of the Steelers, the declarations of the rivalry's death by members of the local and national media, all of it just served as the most pointed reminder that the Browns have fallen from glory, and hard. The one-time New York Yankees of professional football had become the Los Angeles Clippers -- a team with losing in its DNA.

Better talent, in the form of star players -- the kind a team is supposed to get when it drafts first overall -- is ultimately the only way the Browns are going to amass the bricks and mortar needed to turn their fortunes around. But that's not all of it. You need talent to win. But you also need to have your heart in it. You have to be invested physically, mentally and emotionally in wanting to win.

Thursday night, we saw for the first time in a long, long time a Browns team that cared. Really, truly cared. Thursday night, we saw a maligned coaching staff leading an offense and defense that was undermanned and undertalented, but still playing like this game meant something. Everyone from one-man wrecking crew Josh Cribbs to unheralded rookies like Marcus Benard started playing like they were sick and tired of losing to the Steelers and finally wanted to do something about it.

The Steelers, for their part, were fighting for their playoff lives. They had lost four straight and had fallen to 6-6 heading into the game. Ben Roethlisberger was a career 10-0 against the Browns. Maybe they viewed this game as a free throw, a chance to relax, get an easy win against a devastated team and right their ship. Or maybe the Steelers really can't bail water fast enough to prevent their ship from sinking.

Whatever happened, the Steelers looked completely frazzled by the different looks that defensive coordinator Rob Ryan threw at them. Roethlisberger was sacked eight times. Rashard Mendenhall was Pittsburgh's leading rusher, amassing a pedestrian 53 yards on 16 carries.

Still, through all of it, Pittsburgh hung tough and remained within a touchdown in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter is when Roethlisberger, like all great quarterbacks, becomes an escape artist and pulls drive-saving completions out of his nether regions.

Thursday, it wasn't there. Roethlisberger moved the ball, but looked utterly mediocre in doing so. The deadly efficiency with which he normally marches his team on game-winning and game-tying drives was absent. Needing a touchdown to tie with time running thin, he didn't penetrate any further than the Cleveland 39 yard line before David Bowens knocked away a 4th-and-6 pass, essentially sealing the game.

When Bowens knocked the ball away and began celebrating, I knew for certain that it was right for the Browns to win this game. They needed it. They worked for it. They deserved it.

We, as a city of football fans, deserved it.

After the game, Phil Dawson -- the only Brown to experience every loss to the Steelers since 1999 -- was found with moist eyes in the locker room. He had pointed to the fans in the Dawg Pound after the game, the ones who were sticking around in the open lakefront freezer, steaming the wind-chilled sub-zero air with their trademark barking.

"This was for them," Dawson told The Plain Dealer. "I just wanted to let them know how much I appreciate them. It was a moment like this that you want to share with them. I hope the people in Cleveland enjoy this one because they really deserve it."

High emotion at the end of a miserably cold game near the end of a lost season. Tears of joy after finally breaking the shackles of submission. Dawg Pound fans returning the sound and fury of the late '80s to the shores of Lake Erie, for at least one night.

That's why this is still a rivalry. That's why Thursday night was worth a couple of spots in the draft. That's why this game means more.

Opportunity knocks

From the start of training camp until the end of November, Delonte West was a man on the edge.

Delonte was a man on the edge emotionally, on the edge of domestic turmoil and on the edge of pending legal proceedings from his September weapons-related arrest. Because of that, he was a man on the edge with the Cavs. He has spent the past few months hovering around the team's fringes, involved, yet not all that involved.

Early in the season, he was practicing with the team, but not activated as Danny Ferry and Mike Brown continued to move very cautiously with their troubled player. Aided by pressure on Brown from LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal, he returned for a Halloween showdown with Charlotte. He scored 13 points, but was largely ineffective in the ensuing three games. Following the Cavs' win in New York on Nov. 6, he was deactivated again, missing another four games in the span of 11 days.

It was during this time that Ferry reportedly made a hard push for Stephen Jackson, who had grown disenchanted with the Golden State Warriors. Jackson is a swingman with his own checkered past, but loads of scoring talent and defensive ability. Jackson is 31 and signed to a horrible contract that will saddle his team for another three seasons as Jackson creeps into his mid-30s, but at a time when the Cavs were about to resign themselves to moving forward without Delonte, Jackson was a worthwhile acquisition to pursue. Statistically, he could replace West and then some.

But Warriors coach and organizational overlord Don Nelson had other ideas. The Charlotte Bobcats were offering Vladimir Radmanovic and Raja Bell, who could both help the Warriors at some point this season. The Cavs were reportedly offering up the unreliable West on the condition of a buyout. If Nelson turned down West, the Cavs' remaining stable of tradeable pieces included Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who would fit Nelson's uptempo style like a down jacket fits a Caribbean cruise, and other assorted bits and pieces at the end of the bench.

To put it another way, all Nelson could hope to gain from the Cavs is cap relief, and cap relief probably wasn't enough for one of the Warriors' two best players. There also might be something to the swirling rumor that Nelson didn't want to reward the malcontent Jackson with a trade to a contender in Cleveland.

Whatever the reason, Jackson is now a Bobcat, and the Cavs were left with Delonte's dicey situation, and the knowledge that how his season plays out might have a great deal to do with how the Cavs' season plays out.

As long as Delonte is a Cav, he's an important part of the team. With a versatile skill set, indefatigable legs and the ability to play relentless defense on bigger guards, he simply brings too many assets to the table to become an extra on the set. There is no real way for a team to reduce its reliance on a player like Delonte, unless it wants to completely replace him with another player.

Stephen Jackson and Delonte West together is an either/or proposition. With Jackson on the roster, Delonte would have been reduced to a bit player, making do with the scraps of playing time that Brown throws his way, hoping for a teammate's strained groin or pulled hamstring to bump him up in the rotation. Every time Delonte arrived for a game or practice, he would have found himself surrounded by reminders that he's unreliable, damaged goods, that his superiors have deemed him unfit for a key role on a winning team.

It might have been the ruination of Delonte's career as we know it. Or at the very least, the ruination of his time with the Cavs.

Delonte needed another chance. He needed opportunity to knock yet again. And that's exactly what he received when Nelson decided to send Jackson to Charlotte instead of Cleveland. In the weeks following Jackson's trade to Clarlotte, Delonte has re-emerged as the do-everything handyman who was so critical to the Cavs' success last year.

A week ago Saturday, Delonte pulled a 10-point, 10-assist game out of nowhere, helping the Cavs rout the Mavericks. He followed it up with an eight-point game in a blowout win over Phoenix.

This past Friday against Chicago, he had an emotional downswing, going scoreless and playing just over five lethargic minutes before Brown pulled him. Earlier in the season, it might have foretold another two-week inactive spell. But Delonte delivered his most encouraging signs yet on Sunday.

Not only was he active for Sunday's win over the Bucks, he was the MVP of the game. In 24 minutes, he scored 21 points, helping the Cavs to erase an early 11-0 deficit and spurring an unreal 29-0 run that turned the rest of the game into a scrimmage.

It's not time to get swept up in Redz-mania just yet. He's still mired in a volatile point in his life. He's still afflicted with bipolar disorder and will be for the remainder of his life. Chances are, he's going to miss games between now and the end of the season, whether it is due to emotional issues or his pending legal proceedings. It would be folly to assume that a uptick in game performance signals the all-clear.

What the past four games does demonstrate is that Delonte is starting to play with the same confidence he showed last year. His recovery between the Chicago and Milwaukee games would seem to show that he's figuring out how to manage his emotional swings effectively -- at least to the point that one bad day doesn't become two bad weeks.

No one -- not even Delonte himself -- knows if he can continue on this upward trend for the long haul. But it looks like Delonte is going to try as hard as he can to stay on the court and deliver more games like he has over the past week and a half.

Perhaps out of necessity more than a willingness to trust in Delonte's stability, the Cavs are giving him the chance to stick around and reclaim his status from last year. There are many ways it could go right, and many ways it could go wrong. The certainty is the four-plus months of basketball left to be played between now and the start of the playoffs, time enough for just about any course of events to unfold.

For now, the relationship between the Cavs and Delonte West might be a little short on trust, but long on need. Delonte is seizing the chance to play himself back into the meat of Brown's rotation, and it seems like the Cavs are backing off the search for his replacement.

If Delonte stay put, the rewards and risk are both significant. The relationship between player and team needs to remain constructive and productive through June if the Cavs are to have a realistic shot at winning the 2010 NBA title.

The center of attention

If you've followed the Cavaliers for any or all of the past 13 years, it has been easy to develop an emotional attachment to Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Between 1996 and 2001, he missed two full seasons, and all but five games of a third season, recovering from repeated bone breaks in his feet. The frustration for Z, the Cavs and Cleveland fans was compounded by the fact that his talent was undeniable. In his delayed rookie season of 1997-98, he averaged 13.9 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game, and was named to the NBA's All-Rookie First Team.

But the foot problems just wouldn't go away. Faced with the possibility of crippling himself by continuing to play basketball, he seriously considered retirement. He decided to make one last go of it with an extensive restructuring of his left foot -- which accounted for five of his seven foot fractures -- that was aimed at taking stress off the navicular bone, in the midfoot, which kept failing.

The 2000 surgery led to another year of painful rehabilitation, and a tenuous-at-best grip on his career. When Z took the floor during the 2001-02 season, no one really knew what to expect. He played in 62 games, starting 23. His 11 points per game was gravy. The big victory was his presence on the court.

If Z could have finished out his playing days as a serviceable backup, it would have been considered a minor miracle by anyone who watched his five-year battle with brittle feet. But Z was only getting started. As the 2002-03 season progressed, it became apparent that the restructuring surgery had been a rousing success. He averaged 17.2 points per game, still a career high, and -- most importantly -- played in 81 of a possible 82 games. The only game he missed that year was due to a technical-foul suspension.

But the Cavs won just 17 games that year. The 2003 draft was the type that changes franchises, and the Cavs wanted a piece of the action. More specifically, the Akron high school phenom, LeBron James.

When the ping-pong balls of the NBA draft lottery handed the first pick to the Cavs, LeBron's future as a Cav was sealed, and Z was suddenly an important supporting cast member of the Cavs' resurgence.

The ensuing six seasons have brought Cleveland the spoils of LeBron: The franchise's first NBA Finals berth in 2007 and a 66-win season a year ago. But the past six seasons have also seen Z age from smooth moves and a silky jumper to a just-plain-slow spot-up jump shooter.

The game has changed. Now 34, Z has aged as gracefully as one could expect, given the amount of metal in his feet, but the center spot has been taken over by an assortment of freakishly good athletes.

When Z entered the league, the center spot was the sole property of muscle men and back-to-the-basket players. Shaquille O'Neal was the gold standard -- huge and pumped, but never to be mistaken for a high wire act. The other dominant centers of the time included Hakeem Olajuwon, Alonzo Mourning, David Robinson and Dikembe Mutombo. All great in their own ways, but without question fitting the old-school mold of a center.

Then Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan came of age, and the era of the power forward-center hybrid arrived. The wing-scorer play of Amare Stoudemire upped the ante on what a center could and could not do. Then in 2004, Dwight Howard arrived. The strength of a center, the athleticism of a forward, and a tremendous leaper to boot.

By the time Howard and the Magic got through with dispatching the Cavs in last spring's Eastern Conference Finals, it was apparent to those inside and outside the organization that if the Cavs wanted to win the four playoff series necessary to claim the NBA title, Z just wasn't going to cut it as the starting center anymore.

So Danny Ferry traded for Shaq. Even at 37 and slowing down, Shaq still brings a dimension of size, power and defense to the pivot that Z could never hope to bring.

The net result: When Shaq is healthy, Z now comes off the bench. In the closing years of his career, with seasons' worth of aches and pains taking their toll, it has been a difficult adjustment for the Lithuanian big guy.

Coming into games from the bench means coming into games cold. The muscles that you worked so hard to limber in pregame warmups start to contract. The post touches and perimeter shots you were used to getting at the outset of every game are no longer there. For Z, who was used to filling a certain role for so long, coming off the bench is more than a mentality shift. It's a shift in his state of being. So far, his game hasn't reacted well.

Through Friday's loss at Charlotte, Z had started six of a potential 16 games. His minutes per game are down about three from last year (24.3 from 27.2). While his minutes per game have fallen off somewhat, his points and rebounds per game are way off. He's averaging 7.1 PPG after having never averaged fewer than 11 PPG in any previous season. His 6.2 RPG is on pace to become his lowest per-game rebound total since he averaged 5.4 RPG in 2001-02 while returning from his reconstructive foot surgery.

However, the biggest red alert comes from his shooting percentage. Z is a career 47.5 percent field goal shooter. His 15-to-18 foot jumper has set standards for reliability that car companies can only hope to match. But this year, it's just not there. Through Friday, he was shooting 37.8 percent from the field, and the struggling has bled over to his free throw shooting. A career 78.1 percent free-throw shooter, Z is shooting a mere 71 percent from the stripe so far this season.

If Z can't shoot it like Z, his on-court value to the team decreases dramatically, especially when the Cavs have to face another elite team that poses athletic mismatches for Z on the defensive end.

We're quickly arriving at what might be an unavoidable conclusion: The level of competition provided by the frontcourts of the NBA's other elite, plus the arrival of Shaq, might equal Z as a mismatched part. In which case, his $11.5 million expiring contract is best put to use in a trade for a player who better fits the Cavs' schemes.

With the Cavs preparing themselves to move forward without Delonte West if need be, it would seem that Ferry should want to thoroughly investigate any opportunity to add a high-caliber shooting guard to the roster. Ferry reportedly made a hard push for Stephen Jackson, but the Warriors balked at the Cavs' offer and sent Jackson to Charlotte.

Power forward is another area of potential need. Though J.J. Hickson has, on the whole, looked pretty good since moving to the starting lineup several weeks ago, power forward is still not a team strength -- particularly if Z continues to struggle and Anderson Varejao has to log big minutes at center. Leon Powe could add some beef to the big forward spot upon his return, but that won't be until February at the earliest -- and it would be better to remain conservative with your Powe expectations, given that he'll be returning from an 8-to-10 month rehab stint.

If Ferry can add a perimeter-shooting power forward, the so-called "stretch four" who can help clear out operating space for Shaq, LeBron and Mo Williams in the paint, he has to take a serious look at it.

Ultimately, the best option might be to part ways with Z. It's a potentially painful decision that Ferry could have to make. Z and Ferry are friends going back to their days as Cavs teammates. Z is the longest-tenured Cav, he's waded through a lot of medical adversity and bad basketball to get to where he is, and it would be a sweet stanza of poetry if he could someday be on the podium as the Cavs are passing around the Larry O'Brien Trophy as the NBA champions.

But that celebration might never arrive unless Ferry deals Z for a player who can help this team win in May and June. Right now, Z is having a hard enough time doing his part in November, let alone next spring, when he'll have another season's worth of wear and tear on his aging body.

There is the often-referenced possibility of a trade-and-buyout scenario, which would allow Z to return to the Cavs 30 days later, but once Ferry pulls the trigger on a trade, that matter is between Z and the team that receives him. Z might want to return to the Cavs because his ties to the team are so deep, because of his loyalty to Ferry, or because he'd like a shot at a ring, even if it means riding the end of the bench. But it would be wise to not assume any of that.

It might come down to the decision to sacrifice Z, his tenure with the Cavs and everything he has meant to the team in the LeBron James era, for a better shot at a title -- and maybe by extension, a better shot at keeping LeBron happy and in a Cavs uniform after this season.

It might be heartbreaking for Ferry to make that trade, but considering what's at stake, the heartbreak could become exponentially worse if Ferry doesn't find the right trade and execute it between now and the February trade deadline.

Remembering why I'm thankful

In Cleveland, you have to want to be thankful.

In a town where the economy is badly damaged, jobs are drying up, the population is shrinking and the sports teams haven't delivered a major league professional title in 45 years, it's incredibly easy to focus on the ways in which we're the gum on the bottom of fate's shoe. It's far too easy to look down the road and see a Cleveland in which LeBron James has left and is winning championships elsewhere, in which casinos have become a failed experiment that haven't driven any type of growth except crime.

It's way too easy to look to the heavens and ask, "What have you done for me lately?"

That's why we need the holiday season in this town.

Not the retail-driven, hyper-commercialized, big-box retailer, buy-the-perfect-present holidays. The holidays of quiet reflection, looking back on the past year and taking stock of your life.

It's fitting that Thanksgiving kicks off the season. Because before you can look to the spoils of Christmas morning and the hopeful promise of a new year, you need to remember what you have right now. Even if you need to search the folds of your brain for your source of gratitude, it's worth the time. You might even learn something about yourself in the process.

Need some encouragment? Let me set the example. Here are some of the things, great and small, that I'm thankful for this holiday season:

In Cleveland, I can make it across town in 35 minutes

When you get right down to it, Cleveland is just the right size. Big enough to be a substantial metropolitan area, but not so big that commuting becomes a migraine-inducing struggle. In most cities, major traffic jams are a fact of life and urban commuting is a part-time job that you hold in addition to your full-time job.

It's been driven home to me the past couple of years, ever since my girlfriend (now fiancee and wife by next September) moved here from the Toledo area. I live on the west side. My fiancee lives in Lake County. We often drive back and forth to see each other during the week, despite the fact that our apartment complexes are separated by 27 miles.

In Cleveland, it's possible. In Atlanta, for instance, it would be a lot more difficult. Atlanta's outerbelt is often choked with traffic by mid-afternoon. Their rush hour commonly lasts 3-4 hours, and their non-rush hour daytime traffic is like Cleveland's rush hour volume.

Three successful 5Ks

I've been running on a fairly regular schedule for almost two years. But it wasn't until this past summer when I decided to start taking running more seriously.

I always hated running growing up. It made my sides hurt and my lungs burn. But I decided to, in small increments, fight through my body's temper tantrums and get myself to the point where I could run a sustained 3.1 miles. In October, I ran my first 5K and won the second place award for my age group. I ran two other races in October and November.

Am I fast? not by a long shot. I run 5Ks in about half an hour. But I ran them, I didn't sustain any injuries and I can officially say I've taken a path in life that I thought I'd never take. It leads to a finish line at the end of a road race.

I'm looking forward to more 5Ks, and maybe 10Ks, in 2010.

Sunsets over Lake Erie

One of the great advantages of spending time in Lake County is that the Lake Erie shoreline starts to veer sharply to the northeast. As a result, each summer you get a front-row view for some of the best water sunsets east of California.

Sometimes, you can kind of forget that Cleveland is, at its heart, a marine city. A drive up the Lake Erie coast at sunset puts you back in touch with your inland sea roots.

Melt Bar and Grilled

Only about five miles from my apartment. A nationally-recognized sandwich paradise worth the trip -- when you can get a table, that is.

Every Cavs game I've seen in person since 2003

No matter what happens after this season, I've seen LeBron James play in person dozens of times. I've seen him bring 20,000 people to their feet with a mind-blowing dunk, an emphatic block, a physics-bending pass. I've been in the vortex of sound. I've seen with my own eyes what he is capable of.

And now, I can also say that I've seen Shaquille O'Neal in person. Time is running out for that.

Jim Tressel's continued dominance of Michigan

I'm marrying into a family of Michigan and Detroit fans. The benefits are immeasurable.

Three ballparks within easy driving distance

So the Indians aren't winning? Don't find the atmosphere at The Prog to be all that fulfilling? There is always the Lake County Captains at Classic Ballpark, and the Lake Erie Crushers at one of the hidden gems of the Cleveland area, All-Pro Freight Stadium in Avon. I frequent all three parks in the summer, but the Crushers' digs are quickly becoming a favorite.

Oberin College's campus

I first visited the campus in 2006. You might have your opinions about the college or the town, but the square at the center of campus is a great, and picturesque, relaxing place. I try to get out to Oberlin just to walk around and snap photos at least once or twice a year.

Failing at failing

What the Browns did in losing to Detroit 38-37 on Sunday was pretty remarkable.

Yeah, they built a 24-3 lead after weeks and weeks of historic offensive ineptitude. Yeah, they entirely blew said lead. Yeah, they rallied to take a 37-31 lead into the final minutes. And, yeah, they had the game won until Hank Poteat's pass interference call turned a game-ending Brodney Pool interception into first-and-goal with no time on the clock.

And, I might add, the ensuing Browns timeout gave Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford a chance to recover from an injury suffered when he was leveled on the final timed play. Stafford dragged himself back into the game and threw the winning touchdown pass to Brandon Pettigrew with literally triple zeroes on the game clock.

But none of that is as amazing as the fact that I felt absolutely nothing afterward. Don't misinterpret that. I didn't feel numb. I felt nothing as in, I changed the channel and busied myself doing other things.

Leave it to the Browns: They don't even know how to frustrate me properly anymore.

Sunday's game had all the makings of a thriller. No lead was safe. Stafford and Brady Quinn were slinging the ball like Dan Marino and Johnny Unitas. Stafford finished with 422 yards passing and a 112.7 QB rating. Quinn finished with 304 yards and a 133.1 rating. Neither team relied much on their ground games. Jamal Lewis was the contest's leading rusher, with 75 yards on 24 carries.

Three touchdown passes in the game covered 40 yards or more: Quinn touchdowns to Mohamed Massaquoi (59 yards) and Chansi Stuckey (40 yards), and a Stafford hookup with Calvin Johnson (75 yards).

And that's before you even get to the screwball ending -- a Browns speciality since returning to the league in 1999.

This game was the direct descendent of the '90s run-and-shoot fad. Of Air Coryell and the American Football League. Observed through the lens of a single football game between two teams, this was everything that makes you want to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and watch football. You don't even have to be a fan of either of the teams playing to enjoy a high-scoring shootout. It's great TV, and probably even better in person.

But it was impossible to take Sunday's game without context. And the context is what made this game about as compelling as a marathon research session involving dusty encyclopedia volumes at the local library.

Both teams were 1-8 heading into play. They were bottom feeders at the season's outset, and have actually been worse than advertised. They were consigned to the trash heap a while back. The Lions, who play indoors at climate-controlled Ford Field, only drew a crowd of 43,000, microscopic by NFL standards. The lack of a sellout lowered a blackout on more than half of the state of Michigan, and most of northwest Ohio.

If anything, this game should have been shown outside of Michigan and Ohio, in markets that just wanted to see an entertaining football game. Instead, most of the country got a far-more-meaningful but lower-scoring wrestling match between Indianapolis and Baltimore, won by the still-unbeaten Colts 17-15.

In Ohio, and I can only guess in Michigan as well, this game was killed, gutted and cooked before it even arrived in the kitchen. From the standpoint of a Browns fan, it really didn't matter what Quinn did today against a terrible Lions pass defense. It didn't matter what receiver stepped up. It didn't matter if Lewis found the fountain of youth for one more game. It didn't matter if Kamerion Wimbley looked like an actual pass rusher for one game.

It just didn't matter because the Browns are toast this year, there is a strong possibility that they're headed for another rebuild, that the coaching staff is going to be replaced and the roster once again gutted by a different decision-maker with different philosophies on building a team.

Essentially, this was an exhibition game that occurred about three months too late. There is no way this game could serve as a building block. There is no way this game could serve as any pinpoint of light, foretelling of better days ahead. Not against the post-Matt Millen Lions, a team that is 2-8 and already two wins better than last season.

Actually, this wasn't an exhibition game. Exhibition games generally accomplish something, even if it's just paring down the roster. You find out something about your team -- or at least your players -- during the preseason.

This game was an old-timers reunion game played by 20- and 30-somethings. The Browns and Lions should have been wearing sneakers on the feet and flags on their belts. And what happens at the end of an old timers' game? You grab a beer and reminisce about the glory days. Really, as a Browns fan, what else is there right now?

The Browns didn't just fail on Sunday. They failed their fail. They took a game that should have had some meaning, a game with an ending that should have made me grumpy for the rest of Sunday and a good portion of Monday, and turned it into nothing with their performance in the previous nine games.

Here is the message the Browns' big thinkers need to hear: Want to get fans up for these kinds of games? Play them in September, when the season still has a pulse, before your radio broadcasts become background static for home winterization projects. Then use the momentum from those games -- some of which you'll hopefully win -- to carry the team into fan-drawing, late-season contests that have this foreign substance on them called "playoff implications."

As of now, I really don't care if Quinn outduels Dan Fouts circa 1981. It's way too little, way too late to make me care.

Building the perfect Pippen

The Cavaliers were lauded for their team chemistry all last season. They played as one, stood as one, cheered as one, won as one. They did it for 82 regular season games and two playoff sweeps.

So what if the Cavs roster lacked the top to bottom talent of the Magic, Lakers and Celtics? The 2008-09 Cavs were a shining examples of a team as greater than the sum of its parts. It wasn't about LeBron James finding his Scottie Pippen or his Shaquille O'Neal. It was about team. All for one, one for all, as the Cavs' marketers will tell you.

We believed it, right up until the Magic ended the innocence in six games of the Eastern Conference Finals. The teamwork withered against Orlando's vexing matchup challenges. LeBron turned himself into a one-man scoring show and killed the offense in the process. His teammates couldn't hit shots. Mike Brown's coaching was woefully inadequate.

The disappointing loss scrawled over the poetry of last season, and got people both inside and outside the organization thinking about basketball, once again, as more of a science than an art.

Danny Ferry went out and got what he hopes is a reasonable facsimile of Shaq in 37-year-old, past-his-prime Shaq. You might have to sit him sometimes, just to save some tread on his tires, but if last week's road wins at Orlando and Miami are any indication, he still has enough strength and savvy to help a team win when it counts the most.

Ferry's stabs at adding height to the perimeter have panned out reasonably well so far. Anthony Parker has found a home as the starting shooting guard. Jamario Moon's productivity has escalated over the past couple of weeks.

But something else happened over the summer, away from the rolling cameras. It involves LeBron, J.J. Hickson and a mentoring relationship that goes a lot deeper than most.

Over the summer, LeBron took a personal interest in the Cavs' second-year power forward. As a 20-year-old, Hickson had a difficult rookie season in the NBA. He averaged 4 points and 2.7 rebounds in 62 games before a back injury ended his season early. He often looked overwhelmed at the professional level after spending just one season at North Carolina State. Hickson showed flashes of his raw talent, but was frequently a defensive liability, and Brown yanked him from games early and often.

A youngster buried on a team of established veterans, a team with championship aspirations that couldn't afford to let him play through his growing pains, Hickson appeared destined to join Shannon Brown and Luke Jackson among the host of recent Cavs first-round draft busts.

But circumstances aligned differently for Hickson, who might stand to become the Cav who benefits the most from the team's unceremonious playoff ouster last spring.

For LeBron's entire NBA career, the Cavs have tried to pair him with a frontline second scorer -- his own Scottie Pippen, if you will. While it's folly to think that just because the sidekick formula worked for Michael Jordan, it is a necessary ingredient for every superstar-led championship team, there is logic in the idea that a superstar would want a legitimate second scorer alongside him, someone else that the opposing defense has to worry about stopping each night.

The attempts date back to Ricky Davis in LeBron's rookie season. That didn't work so well. The Larry Hughes experiment could have gone better. When Mo Williams arrived, it was the closest thing to a Jordan/Pippen, Magic Johnson/James Worthy two-man setup we had seen during the LeBron Era.

But against Orlando, Mo regressed into a spot-up jump shooter, which choked off his dribble-driving, pesky-energy game. He looked like anything but a Pippen figure against the Magic.

When LeBron shuffled into the offseason, he was once again a king without an attendant. Maybe that's why he didn't just take Hickson under his wing this summer. He virtually turned him into a blood relative.

If no one else was going to provide him with a Pippen, LeBron was going to build his own Pippen. Hickson is the subject of his grand experiment. Talented enough to be a legitimate second option scorer, young enough to be molded.

True to his best-at-everything approach to life, LeBron didn't cut any corners. Hickson jetted around the country with LeBron, working out with him, appearing at basketball camps, eating meals and spending leisure time with LeBron.

In one summer, LeBron gave Hickson a thorough grounding in NBA basketball -- how to play it, how to live it, how to operate as part of a team.

Now that the season has started, LeBron has begun to test-drive his new creation. He has frequently taken a backseat at the basket, preferring to set up Hickson for his shots. Mo and Shaq -- likely at the urging of LeBron -- have done the same.

It was ultimately Brown's decision to move Hickson into the starting lineup the weekend before last, but it wouldn't shock me if behind-the-scenes campaigning from LeBron had something to do with the change. It was likely a move born from Hickson's marked progress in practice, plus Brown's willingness to trust that his superstar will do what it takes to make the lineup change work.

So far, the change has been an amazing success. The increased playing time has worked wonders for Hickson, who in his first four starts vaulted from six points in 13 minutes against the Knicks a week ago Friday to 20 points in 38 minutes in this past Saturday's win over the Jazz. In that game, he scored on drives and jump shots, and -- as The Plain Dealer's Brian Windhorst pointed out in his game notes -- was on the floor for the final play of a close game. That is a major vote of confidence from Brown. It means that Hickson is now truly being treated as a starter.

Four games is a very small sample size, and he's still making plenty of sloppy mistakes, such as losing his handle on the ball and failing to cleanly handle passes. But for the first time in his young career, it seems like Hickson's deep reservoir of raw talent has been tapped.

If Hickson demonstrates continued progress over the remainder of the season, the Cavs have just found a starting forward for years to come. A starting forward who can probably average 16 to 20 points per game, and with some more fundamental work on defense, can easily average seven to eight rebounds per game.

All of which begs the question, if LeBron is putting this much time and effort into turning Hickson into an integral part of the Cavs' future plans, why would he ditch Hickson at the end of the season to go elsewhere? LeBron isn't trying to do the Cavs a favor by grooming his replacement. The world of professional sports doesn't work like that. He's not developing a close relationship with Hickson just to be nice. He can be friends with Hickson and show him the ropes without turning him into a personal protege.

It seemingly wouldn't make a lot of sense for LeBron to go to these lengths to groom Hickson if he didn't intend to stick around and reap the benefits.

Of course, there is a lot of basketball left to be played between now and next summer. Time will tell how much the lessons of LeBron impact Hickson. Time will tell if Hickson does, in fact, develop into LeBron's second-option, Scottie Pippen sidekick figure.

But if he does, you'd have to believe that LeBron would have a hard time justifying leaving the known for the unknown of the struggling Knicks or Nets, or a potentially-complicated and delicate balancing act with Dwyane Wade on an otherwise-threadbare roster in Miami -- and taking an upfront pay cut from what the Cavs can offer to do so.

There are seven and a half months for all that to shake out. But it appears that J.J. Hickson has suddenly -- or maybe not-so-suddenly -- become a key player who could help determine the future plans of both LeBron and the Cavs.