Los Angeles — I left my hotel for the Clippers game extra early because I had to take the 101 past the LA Coliseum to get to Staples Center.  I wanted to beat the exiting crowds from the USC-UCLA game.  So I left at the start of the third quarter and still ran into thousands of cars…all UCLA fans leaving early.

I would like to watch last night’s game again because when I was crazy busy trying to get a story done by the buzzer due to time zone constraints and I think I missed some stuff.  Here’s what I can tell you, it was the first time this season I’ve seen Mike Brown and Danny Ferry outwardly troubled by their lack of defense.

Brown was throwing all sorts of different strategies out there and none of them were working, which I know is troubling to him.  I thought the entire defense was awful, especially the way they allowed Seattle, the most dangerous 3-point team in the NBA, to get so many looks so early in the game.  But apparently, all of you thought Damon Jones was the worst.  I heard from several people by e-mail today, including a fan from out here in Cali who has vowed to call him Amon Jones from now on because he has no "D."

Damon had a bad defensive night, but he wasn’t alone.  He also had a great offensive night, but he wasn’t alone.  Until the Cavs sell out on defense like they do on offense you are going to continue to see these types of games.

Also, I feel they were guilty of doing the things I warned about in my last post.  They settled for 3-pointers just to try to match the Sonics and ran with them when they should’ve tried to slow things down by getting it to Ilgauskas, who had a huge advantage whenever Nick Collison was on him.

Oh, well, on to the next…

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