I have been on a bit of a hiatus since the game in New York and was not in Chicago today.  However, I did watch the entire Cavs’ 112-108 win over the Bulls.  I believed this was the biggest game of the year to this point.  But every game from now on in will surely have extra emphasis because the Bulls and Pistons are still so close.

Here’s some things I saw…

–The last six minutes of regulation showed just how weak-minded the Cavs can be.  Seriously, above all else, mental lapses are this team’s biggest weakness.  To repeatedly just hoist away jumpers, low percentage ones at that, is just mindless.  They have to know they cannot be successful this way, yet they do.  Although it is on Mike Brown as well.  My personal favorite was when LeBron James imbounded the ball with four seconds on the shot clock, got it right back, and then fired up a 25-footer.  This was out of a timeout.  Honestly, could this have been the play drawn up?
–Even though the last shot in regulation was ugly, it was satisfactory because the design was a LeBron post up and also Sasha Pavlovic drove the ball at least.
–The way overtime went is the reason the Cavs will always be dangerous in the postseason.  A single player can make such an impact in a tight game in the NBA.  The Cavs probably did not deserve to win this game, but they had the best player and so they did.  It happens a lot this time of year.  Just ask the Dallas Mavericks.
–Sasha and Zydrunas Ilgauskas are a lot alike.  The more shots they get, the more productive they will be.  It is simple and obvious.  The inverse, however, seems to be true with Larry Hughes.  The more shots he takes the less productive he seems to be.  As some of us in the media say about Larry:  "All roads lead to 40 percent."  If Larry starts 4-4, he’ll probably miss his next six or so.  Starts 1-of-6, he’ll probably make the next three.
–Sasha is very aggressive going to the basket, but he needs to be more aggressive finishing.  With Ben Wallace and Tyrus Thomas in the game, you must go strong.  None of this underhanded or finger roll stuff.
–Drew Gooden deserves a lot of credit in this game.  It was a fierce game and there was a lot of fighting around the basket and Drew won a lot of battles.
–As I get ready to head to Boston, I think it ought to be pointed out that a loss to the Celtics, who probably won’t have Paul Pierce, would render today’s win meaningless.

Indianapolis — Beating a team that is eight games under .500 can’t be classified as a great win.  The Cavs will have plenty of tougher games between now and the playoffs.  Still the 105-94 win over the Pacers got them their playoff berth and, for the time being, their focus back.  So it had its merits.

Some thoughts…

–There was some disagreement over whether the Cavs had one of those famous/infamous "players’ only" meetings this morning.  Mere semantics.  Basically, LeBron James asked the coaches to leave the huddle and had a few words about taking the road trip very seriously.  Two things are important here: 1. LeBron took it upon himself to do it.  2. He led by example when he got on the first bus and came over to the arena early to get extra shooting in.  It is the first time I can remember LeBron coming over on the first bus since his rookie season.
–In the fourth quarter I was closely charting each Cavs’ possession with a "G" or a  "B."  As in good or bad.  I only wrote down two Bs.   They played at a controlled pace, ran when they could and calmly used their sets.  The Pacers aren’t a great team obviously, but they are a good defensive team yet couldn’t stop the Cavs in the fourth.  Six of the nine baskets in the fourth were scored in the paint.  Plus the Cavs were 12-of-13 at the line in the fourth.
–This game was more like how they played during the winning streak.  Yes they made shots, but it was the focus that was the major difference.  They lost focus in the fourth quarter in Charlotte and it was gone until tonight.
–Mike Brown took the interesting step of playing Eric Snow instead of Larry Hughes down the stretch.  Larry was having a bad night.  I still don’t like Snow playing 12-15 straight minutes, but tonight he was attacking and hitting jumpers so it made it easier.  He had seven rebounds as well.  The biggest decision Brown made with Snow was to run a clear-out play for him — yes Mr. Snow! — with three minutes left.  It turned into a 3-point play that clinched the game.  Of course, had Eric been blocked everyone would’ve ripped both of them.  That’s life.
–Three years ago I voted Jermaine O’Neal first team All-NBA.  I still believe he’s one of the top 10-12 players in the league.  Tonight he scored 32 points on one leg with the Cavs running all sorts of different defenses and defenders at him.  It was a great performance.
–So LeBron is hosting the ESPYs and he says he’s not sticking to the script.  Hey Bron, not a good idea.
–After the game, Sasha Pavlovic was trying to sing a Young Jeezy song.  First, Sasha can’t rap, at least not in English.  Second, he was apparently messing it all up.  So Donyell Marshall and David Wesley were trying to explain to him the lyric was "Go Getta" as in "he’s a go-getter" not "he’s a go get her" as Sasha as saying.  He wasn’t getting it, but it was damn funny watching the two of them attempting to explain what a "go-getter" is in comparison to what he thought "go get her" meant.  (Note: this was modified once I was clued in to who Young Jeezy was).
–He was playing during the show, but I wonder if Scot Pollard would’ve liked Sanjaya’s hair tonight.

As has happened several times this season, the Cavs allowed themselves to be sucked in to playing outside their skillset tonight in getting handled by the Nuggets, 105-93.  There have have been a handful of such losses this season, though this one is more costly because both Chicago and Detroit won today and there’s a five-game trip in the offing.

My view…

–There were some odd things happening in this game.  The Nuggets didn’t even try to play defense. Seriously, they didn’t even foul.  They committed just 10, the fewest in the NBA this season.  Plus the Cavs allowed 60 percent shooting, the most they’ve allowed in four years.  Yes, the Cavs were poor, but the Nuggets also played very, very well.
–Overall, this game just highlighted a general loss of focus over the last week.  The Cavs lost their offensive edge against Utah eight days ago.  Now, they’ve lost a defensive edge.  Again, this shows the difference between the Cavs and a team like Dallas or San Antonio.  When they get it going, they don’t lose focus and they win 10, 12, 14 straight.  The Cavs won a game when they played badly against Utah and they let it go to their head.  I am throwing out the win over the Knicks, they didn’t care.
–Larry Hughes told me after the Cavs the defensive approach was flawed because they were cross-matching.  In other words, not guarding the guy that guards them and it was causing confusion in transition.  He said "a some point, you just gotta guard your man."  This is a Paul Silas belief, but not Mike Brown.  It sounds like it could sometimes be an issue, but I think it is a bit of a copout.  Larry would always prefer to play more loose and fast like his old Washington days.  The answer is to control the game better, that is the way the Cavs win.
–I had been tipped off that Warren Buffett was coming to the game tonight and Tom Withers from the Associated Press and I met him and spoke to him.  It’s not everyday you meet the second-richest man in the world.  He said it was his first pro basketball game in 60 years.  Here’s all I need to say about the man’s net worth: His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has $38 billion in cash in the bank.  That’s liquid, baby.  He was very down to earth, as is his rep, and had a couple of jokes about his relationship with LeBron ready.  Like: "He tells me what socks to buy, I tell him what stocks to buy."  Yeah, buy Berkshire, which costs 108K a share by the way.
–So Mr. Buffett sat in Nike’s courtside seats by the Cavs bench with LeBron’s money man, Maverick Carter, some of Buffett’s family, and Lynn Merritt, who is a big Nike executive.  It was so A-list, that the second biggest power broker in the building, Wes Wesley, got bumped from his usual spot.  He had to settle for seats right next to the Nuggets bench.  Guess he wasn’t in St. Louis like Pat Forde said he’d be.
–During the game, Mr. Buffett wanted a Diet Pepsi and ordered one from a vendor.  But guess what, no cash.  Merritt had to fork over the $3.  I hope he expensed it to Phil Knight.
–In a four-minute interview after the game, LeBron said "definitely" 18 times. I counted.  I have no idea what this means other than he says it a lot when he’s just mindlessly answering questions.
–Not to say that Damon Jones is either disgruntled or assured he’s moving elsewhere after this season, but he informed everyone within earshot Sunday that everything he had was for sale.  His house, his cars, even his diamond-crusted watch, which Daniel Gibson wanted a price on.  I won’t say the number, but It seemed out of the rook’s range.  He asked LeBron if he’d buy his house, which he bought off Bob Sura for 600K according to my searching.  LeBron quoted him a cash price, which Damon thought about but rejected.  LeBron willing to write a check for that much might’ve impressed me on another night, but I had, after all, just shaken hands with a guy worth $52 billion.

This was a bad game, so bad that it was entertaining because all I was watching was other stuff.  The Knicks pretended like they wanted to play for awhile but Isiah Thomas decided to throw in the towel in the third quarter and the Cavs won 90-68.  But surprisingly, I am really looking forward to the rematch next week at the Garden.

Why?  Well…

–I think Malik Rose was seconds away from hauling off and hitting Andy Varejao.  He’d simply had enough of him and his feisty antics in the third quarter.  He got his fifth foul and Isiah left him in, which apparently didn’t make him too happy, because after Varejao missed a free throw, Rose went over and slammed him.  This accomplished two things: He didn’t have to play any more and he got a shot in on Varejao.  So Jerome James came in for a minute, committed a turnover and got his own slam in at Andy.  By the way, Jerome once hit me with a ball (old blog link alert).  After the game, Mike Brown told me Andy gets on people’s nerves because he "breathes on them and his hair gets in their mouth."  That’s pretty nasty, but true I believe.
–The Cavs go on a 13-2 run to open the second half and Isiah benches everybody but Eddy Curry, sits down and apparently orders the team jet to warm up the engines.  I know they were banged up and tired, but it still seemed a little early.
–The Cavs made some shots tonight, but their offense still wasn’t great.  Still way too many bad jumpers out of the flow.  Zydrunas Ilgauskas got some more touches and had 16 points.  He’s going to have ugly moments, OK, but right now he’s actually playing pretty well so the Cavs might do well to use him more like this.  Then, again, his shorts fell off when he set a pick in the fourth quarter.  Which was pretty funny.
–Larry Hughes hadn’t made a 3-pointer since the Sacramento game and tonight made 4-of-6. Is the slump over? We’ll see.
–Brown’s rotations were still wacky tonight.  He didn’t use Daniel Gibson, who’s out of it, until mop up minutes but used Ira Newble in the first quarter.  The most interesting thing I saw was he removed Sasha Pavlovic in the first quarter early with Larry Hughes and then inserted them both back in when LeBron James sat down in the second quarter.  It is an interesting way of having more offensive punch in the second quarter and giving Sasha more of an opportunity.  We’ll see if it lasts.
–LeBron James Jr. threw one of those freebie balls out on the court during play again and then went over and sat in front of the Cavs bench for awhile.  I joked in my game story that if it had been a tomato, it would’ve been understandable with the quality of the game.  Also, if the little guy had gone down to the Knicks bench instead, Isiah might’ve tried to put him in the game.  He’s a cute little guy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the NBA made a little call to the Cavs and asked he stay off the bench area because it was all over TV.  But it was more entertaining than the game at that moment, for sure.
–So before the game, Brown was talking about LeBron’s head injury from the other night and he said:  "I know he’s a football player, I’ll have to ask him if it was a football hit."  Then I mumbled underneath my breath, at least I thought, that LeBron wouldn’t know because he always ran out of bounds.  Well that drew quite a reaction from the assembled media mass and the coos only grew louder when I said, not quietly this time, that my memories of LeBron’s wide receiver days included few cross-the-middle routes and more than a few alligator arm moments.  Not that I blamed him, the last thing he wanted to do was risk injury.  Well, all thought this was pretty funny since LeBron loves to talk about his football days in such glorious terms.  But, he was 6-6, 225 pounds at the time and he was usually going up against 5-11, 175 pound defensive backs.  C’mon, run a few flag routes and fades, catch a few alley-oops 12 feet off the ground and call it a Friday night.  That was his career, I know, I was covering the games back then.  So anyway, my fellow reporters go running to LeBron and one of them who I won’t name — OK, it was the Plain Dealer’s Branson Wright — sold me out.  And what did LeBron say?  "Yeah, I ran out of bounds if I could."  No respect I get, none!
–Before I went to bed last night, I read New York Daily News Knicks bear writer Frank Isola’s blog (ignore the cheesy name) about questions he’d like to ask owner James Dolan.  It is his little rebuttal for the exclusive interview Dolan gave the New York Post last week.  Pretty funny stuff for an NY media outsider.  Anyway, so I go to sleep and I have a dream that I’m playing craps with Jim Dolan at the Borgata in Atlantic City.  By the way, I’ve never met the man or been to A.C.  But I think I won $300.  Weird.

Something happened to the Cavs in those last few minutes in Charlotte, they lost their focus and it isn’t back yet.  Neither the Mavericks or the Cavs played all that well tonight, but the Mavs had better focus and so they won, 98-90.  This game was so very winnable for the Cavs, yet they never really close to winning it.  Had they played with the same intensity they did down in Dallas, I think they’ would’ve won.

So…

–How many "bad" offensive possessions did the Cavs have?  Let’s say, on average, a good team like the Cavs will score on about 45-50 percent of their possessions.  A good offensive team will maybe have 30-35 percent of possessions where they take a good shot and just miss and 10-15 percent of the time will take a bad shot, commit a turnover, whatever.  Settle down stats people out there, I’m am generalizing based on experience.  Tonight, I’d say the Cavs maybe 30 percent of the time had good possessions.  There were so many bad shots, bad turnovers, bad passes, and the like.  Of course, the Mavs had a lot to do with it.
–I know Donyell Marshall thought he got fouled and maybe he did, but I have no idea what he was doing when he threw the ball backwards over his head while falling down on a fastbreak.  A fastbreak should be like the ocean, don’t turn your back.  If you do, it’s over buddy, pull it out.
–Hmmm, Zydrunas Ilgauskas is playing pretty good these days.  His hook shot is working.  He’s shooting a good percentage.   So why isn’t he allowed to play down the stretch in these last few games?  With back-to-backs and overtimes and deadline issues, honestly I haven’t been able to ask Mike Brown.  But I will.
–While I’m at it, Sasha Pavlovic scored 11 points in the first half Tuesday and then got one shot in the second half.  On Wednesday he scored 13 points in the first half and got three shots in the second half.  This has to be corrected.  The guy has been the most impressive thing about this Cavs season to me.
–LeBron James banged his head pretty bad there in the third quarter, the crowd totally gasped when they saw the replay.  He’s a tough guy, but I was still surprised to see him not miss a beat.  I’d have to imagine he suffered at the least a minor concussion on that play.  After the game, Cavs’ trainer Max Benton stood next to LeBron as he did his postgame interviews, which is a break from routine.  I can only assume Max was keeping an eye on LeBron to make sure he was coherent not saying bizarre things.  Which he wasn’t, but he did say he was concerned how he’d feel Thursday.  Browns fans may remember a few years ago when Tim Couch broke down and started crying for little reason after a game in which he suffered a concussion.
–Overall, LeBron was very aggressive in the fourth quarter and got to the basket all he wanted, scoring 17 points.  He was pretty good on defense, too, he had three more blocks and two steals.  But early on the Mavs really took him out of the flow with zone and double teams and his teammates, save for Sasha and on a few possessions Z, his teammates did not pick him up.
–The Cavs offense needs more oil already, they are shooting 40 percent over the last three games.  Too many jumpers again, just 20 points in the paint in the first three quarters tonight. Same goes for Larry Hughes.  For those of you not counting, he’s shooting 24 percent over the last three games.
–Also, the Cavs are No. 1 in the NBA in 3-point percentage defense, but they’ve been burned the last two games.  The reason is because they are allowing penetration and getting caught in help-and-recover.  This also needs to be cleaned up.
–The Mavs are so good, they really know how to win.  They never let the Cavs or the crowd get to them.  So many clutch plays, shots, rebounds and defensive maneuvers.  What a great team, easy to like because of their poise.  They’ve cut their teeth, the Cavs are just a few notches behind them right now.
–The headline is a pun off "the haves and have nots."  Get it?

LeBron James is back, which means so am I writing about No. 23 on ESPN.com.

Also, I’m honored so share some space on the site today with Henry Abbott, the creator of Truehoop who has moved over to ESPN. The launch was today. I became aware of Truehoop in January of 2006 and quickly became a fan and recommended it on this blog many times. Hopefully some of you became fans, too, and got in on the ground floor. If not, check it out, it is great stuff on the NBA.

As long as I’m recommending things, today there was an interesting piece on Michael Jordan on Yahoo!. It explores potential evaluation advantages Jordan has because he conducts various camps for high school and college players. I think there’s another issue that isn’t explored in this piece, too. Jordan has his own brand with Nike that pays high-profile NBA stars to market the product. That is complex, especially when it comes to signing free agents who have or want shoe deals. The NBA has all sorts of rules on this — Dan Gilbert paid Rip Hamilton to endorse Rock Financial in Detroit after all — but it is still a unique set of circumstances.

Charlotte — What happened here at the lovely Charlotte Bobcats Arena tonight was the definition of a bad loss.  It’s an 82-game season, these are going to happen, but considering it is now Spring and the stakes are high, I’d have to say this goes into the unacceptable category.

There was lots of crazy stuff happening in the final few minutes.  And while I have staunchly defended the head coach all season, I have to assign the blame to him tonight.  Here’s why:

–The game was in total helter skelter mode with under two minutes left.  Let me go over it in a long and winding fashion to illustrate what I mean: Up 94-90, LeBron James blocked Matt Carroll and threw the ball to Eric Snow, who rushed to the other end and tried to layup the ball up a against two defenders and he was swatted by Gerald Wallace, who threw a bad pass that LeBron picked off and threw to Larry Hughes, who was trapped in the backcourt with 1:20 left.  STOP!  This would be a good time to call a time out and settle things down.  But, nope, didn’t happen.  Supposedly Brown tried to call a timeout here, but it doesn’t matter because he didn’t get it.  Then LeBron threw up a 23-footer with 15 seconds on the shot clock.  Eek.
–After the Bobcats scored to pull within two with 40 seconds left, Eric Snow was supposed to take the ball out of bounds to break the press.  But Anderson Varejao did.  STOP!  This would be a good time to call timeout.  Nope.
–Then Andy inbounded the ball to Sasha Pavlovic, who is the king of the bad turnover when games aren’t even in crunch time.  STOP! This would be a good time to call timeout.  Someone, anyone, timeout.  The Cavs had two left.  Heck, Snow knew he was supposed to have the ball, he should’ve called one.  Sasha turned it over three seconds later.
–I am not going to go over what happened after that, it doesn’t matter.  The game was lost right there.  However, I am going to talk about what made a potential blowout such a tight game.  The Bobcats went to a small lineup, which seemed to mess up the Cavs’ sideline.  Despite Zydrunas Ilgauskas dominating the game, he played just five of the game’s last 18 minutes.  Why?  Make the Bobcats defend him.  Also, the small lineup made Brown take Sasha out.  He got one shot in the entire second half.  Why?  Make the Bobcats defend him, too.  Drew Gooden got ZERO shots in the second half.  Why?  The Bobcats had no post defenders.
–With six minutes left in the third quarter, Brown put Snow in to guard Wallace, who was killing the Cavs.  Wallace had just seven points the rest of the way.  One basket came on a putback and one basket came in transition.  That means Snow did a good job.  However, by playing him the last 18 minutes of the game, Brown took Hughes off the point.  This is what was working for the last for the last three weeks.  So in crunch time, no Ilgauskas, almost no Pavlovic, and Snow at the point.  No wonder LeBron was the only person who could score.  And he was dominating the ball and dribbling a whole bunch again, not the dynamic way the Cavs were playing offense.  Plus you lose Ilgauskas and Gooden’s ability to offensive rebound.  The Cavs had just five second chance points in the second half.  Just bad personnel decisions.
–In general, I thought LeBron did a good job of taking the ball to the basket.  He got 12 free throws and made 11 and got a bunch of layups and dunks.  The Cavs had 62 points in the paint, which is good.  What killed them was no one of the team could make a jumper all night.  In the second half, no one scored more than six points besides James.  This was old one-dimensional offense again.
–The Bobcats made a lot of 3s and a lot of jumpers, it was their night in that regard.  They shot 55 percent in the second half yet I didn’t think the Cavs played all that bad on defense.  Also, I thought Wallace was great.  His hustle on defense and his attacking of the glass on offense when he stopped going was difference-making.  But all that could’ve been withstood had some better decisions been made.

The Cavs’ offensive hot streak came to an end tonight, but their win streak didn’t.  Yet again (I keep finding reasons to write this) the team continues to show maturity in grinding out an 82-73 win over the Utah Jazz.

Here we go:

–The Jazz were playing their fourth road game in five nights, they lost all four.  They didn’t even get to Cleveland today until 10:30 a.m. because of weather in Philadelphia.  Plus they were playing without two regulars, Matt Harpring, who had been playing great, and Gordon Giricek.  By the way, Giricek’s nickname is Gira.  Shouldn’t it either be Gorda or Giri?  More on him in a second.  Anyway, the Jazz were behind the 8-ball.
–The Cavs took note of this and really turned up the defensive energy in the second half.  This was the difference in the game.  The Cavs were a step quicker and could jump higher in the stretch run.  They got most of the loose balls — and in a game where neither team shot better than 38 percent, there are a lot of loose balls — and turned them into transition points.
–This was led, in my opinion, by LeBron James.  The Cavs played great defense all night, their rotations were so crisp.  Time after time Carlos Boozer or Mehmet Okur, er, Memo, ran pick and rolls with Deron Williams and they were stymied by a show and a rotating third defender.  However, it was LeBron that got very aggressive at the end of the third quarter, getting his hands on balls and really attacking the glass.  He had 15 defensive rebounds, that’s a great effort with Boozer in there.  Donyell Marshall also played great defense in that stretch.  To see LeBron get after it at the defensive end shows growth on his part.  He knew this was a game to be won with defense and he won it that way.
–The Cavs had 61 rebounds to the Jazz’s 41.  The Jazz are eighth in the league in rebounding and they have Boozer.  The Cavs out-rebounded them by 19 in the second half and 12 in the fourth quarter.  Just pointing this out.
–LeBron’s alley-opp dunk of Larry Hughes’ lob in the third quarter is in his top five this year, I believe.
–The Jazz missed 16 straight shots in the first half.  I think Larry Hughes was trying to one-up them.
–OK, OK, so Hughes was 2-of-17 shooting, had three travels, a carry and a double dribble.  Yikes, bad stuff on offense.  That 3-on-1 break where he kept it and got swatted by Andrei Kirilenko (hey, remember when that guy could play?)…not the best decision ever.  However, he did a great job on Williams.  He kept him in front of him, which really limited his effectiveness.  This guy beat the Cavs by himself the last time out.  Plus, he got a steal when defending a 3-on-1 break, that was impressive.  Also, in something that was very interesting for me to learn, Larry his calling his own plays now.
–You know I was going to bring this up.  In the first half, the Cavs had 32 points and 14 points in the paint.  In the second half they had 50 points and 34 points in the paint.  Also, Zydrunas Ilgauskas had three big baskets when the Cavs ran plays for him late.  This is smart basketball, people.  This is the basketball the Cavs didn’t play for half a season.
–Regardless of what happens in the playoffs, this season has identified Sasha Pavlovic and Daniel Gibson has long-term players of the future.  The Cavs’ core used to look old (with Donyell, Eric Snow and Damon Jones as central cogs).  Now, with Anderson Varejao, James and Drew Gooden, it looks really young.
–I hate sounding this optimistic, I am a card-carrying realist.  But what am I supposed to write in an eight-game win streak when the Cavs are doing the things I cracked them for not doing for three months?
–OK, so here’s my story with Gira.  A year ago this week after Slobodan Milosevic died, I went up and asked Sasha about it.  Being from Serbia (well, now Montenegro, although he’s announced as being from Serbia & Montenegro, which doesn’t exist anymore) I thought Sasha’s perspective would be interesting for a note.  I am not going to put words in Sasha’s mouth — or get involved in something I don’t understand — but after a brief conversation I gleaned that neither Sasha nor his father thought old Slobo was such a bad guy.  In fact, Sasha complained that he couldn’t get proper medical care at the end.  OK, that was a can of worms I didn’t want to open.  So, Phil Miller of the Salt Lake Tribune reads my little note and decides to ask the Jazz’s resident native of the Balkans…Giricek.  Well Gira, who is Croatian, where Milosevic sort of laid waste, ripped the man up and down.  So, I guess what I’m saying here is I’ll bet Sasha and Gira didn’t get along too well when both were with the Jazz a few years ago.  All teams at every level have deep background stuff that affects them, but what I am saying is with the international players there is often stuff going on that we don’t fully understand.
–So I’m done and I didn’t write about Boozer?  That’s correct, I’m done with that stuff and have been for awhile now.  Most interesting thing I saw all night — other than the drunk guy who was directing traffic in the middle of Huron at 5 p.m. wearing a green hat and a pair of exposed fake women’s breasts — was a kid wearing an old No. 1 Boozer jersey.  Except he put a piece of tape over the "zer" and replaced it with "bie" so it spelled Boobie.  As in Daniel "Boobie" Gibson, who wears No. 1, in case you weren’t following.  Now that’s creative, young man.

Memphis — I would like to do something besides praise the Cavs, because that is all I have been doing in print for the past two weeks.  But I cannot after watching them totally bury the Grizzlies 118-96 here tonight after smashing the Kings last night.

Here are some thoughts, per usual:

–While my instincts tell me Larry Hughes’ play at point guard is just a stop gap, I can’t deny the difference in his game.  He’s got 39 assists in the last seven games and the Cavs have stopped standing around as much.  They will not continue to shoot at such crazy percentage, but if they continue to attack and work for high-percentage shots, they will continue to win.  I believe at least.
–The Cavs first eight baskets were scored in the paint tonight and they had 58 points in the paint for the game.  Part of this is because the Grizzlies’ idea of playing help defense is getting out to the wing to wait for the inbounds pass, but part of it is a continued effort to get the ball to Zydrunas Ilgauskas in the post and LeBron James and Larry Hughes’ willingness to drive and kick.
–Right now, all five Cavs starters are on hot streaks.  Nobody is noticing Drew Gooden, who is averaging 15 and 10 over the last six games.  Z is 16-of-20 shooting over the last two games.  Sasha Pavlovic is out of his shooting slump, he’s made 19 of his last 31.  This, too, will not last, but just shows when the offense is working, everybody can get involved.
–In the third quarter when LeBron was knocking down all those shots — he made five jumpers, three 3s, in 2:11 — the whole building was rooting for him.  Even the Dunking Elvises or whatever they’re called.  One of those surreal moments when you know that you’re watching a true superstar, you get caught up in the moment.
–Before the game, all the media is waiting by LeBron’s locker to hear whether he’s going to play or not.  By the way, these back spasms have been bothering him for awhile and could pop up again.  Anyway, so he walks by after getting his 30-minute long massage and just nods to Cavs PR chief Amanda Mercado, who says: "Hold on, everyone, he’s got to go to the bathroom."  This is weird for two reasons: 1. That LeBron has non-verbal communication about his bathroom plans down with Amanda and; 2. It feels weird to be waiting for a guy outside a john.  Damon Jones, amused by the whole scene, demands we report on James’ visit to the can.  "C’mon, ya’ll, you better get in there and find out if it is No. 1 or No. 2.  Wait, hold on…." Then Damon gets up and follows LeBron in, emerges a few seconds later and reports: "Oh, No. 1."  I can’t be sure, but I thought I saw a guy jot something down on his notepad.  Then again, I am the one blogging about this, ahem, crap.

–The Bucks were devastatingly effective at posting the Cavs up.  Ruben Patterson and Michael Redd did it over and over.  With the Cavs’ size, this should be something they want.  It is hard to shoot over Sasha Palvovic, LeBron and Larry Hughes and Eric Snow is a good post defender.  Dribble penetration is usually what causes the Cavs problems.  So why was it working?  I am not sure, but the Cavs repeatedly let them get great position.  The Pacers didn’t have time to put it in the game plan but the Memphis Grizzlies scout and the Kings scout were watching right behind me.  At one point the Bucks made 18-of-24 shots and 13 of those came from or off a post play of some sort.  I was writing all about this when the Cavs made a huge comeback and I had to delete it and praise Ira Newble.

–Before I get off that, Ira did a nice job, but part of it was the Bucks not being patient and chucking jumpers.  That flat-footed heave 3 Ira made is just how he shoots 3s, by the way.  Not 20-footers, just 3s.  He explains this matter-of-factly, as if it were common.  I have no explanation for this.

–In the final minute again on Saturday, LeBron went to the basket twice to tie the game.  This is remarkable because he’d already hit two 3’s to get the Cavs back into the game.  One month ago, I would’ve put cold cash on press row he would’ve taken a 3 in Detroit down two as I watched the play develop.  After he made the 3s in Milwaukee, I might’ve gone double or nothing because he was making them.  Excellent display of intelligent poise.

–I’m not going to talk much about the Pacers game, because it wasn’t much of a game.  Two things I wish to point out.  1. The Cavs remembered the old philosophy of going to Z early in the game.  Not a bad idea since he was being guarded by Troy Murphy.  2. I was impressed with the overall defensive energy from the outset.  Especially from Z and LeBron.  Both were very active and it set a tone for the whole team.

–Oh, one more thing.  Whenever Drew Gooden makes his first shot he usually has a good game.  That and when he gets an offensive rebound he almost always wants to shoot.  This is a deal with the coaches.  He doesn’t get plays called for him, so when he rebounds he gets to shoot.

–Someone tell Shannon Brown that he doesn’t have to jump 10 feet from the basket on a dunk attempt.  It looks cool, but I don’t think it’s a good idea generally.

–Daniel Gibson is out of his boot, my guess is he’s back on Saturday or thereabouts.

–I made a mistake in my story about the Bucks game.  I gave credit to Larry Hughes for the defense on Redd at the end.  Just a mistake on deadline, but it made me look like a total fool considering Mike Brown was kissing Eric Snow just after the game.

–Here’s a question…you would rather have your coach kissing players or skipping down the tunnel to the locker room by himself waving to his players to follow?  By the way, Mike told me walking back out by himself after the review while being taunted by the fans was rather humbling.  I would think the replays of him would be more so.  I guess his wife was mocking him as well.

–Try getting from Milwaukee to Cleveland on a Sunday (limted flight schedules) for a 6 p.m. game (which means I need to be there by 4) on the day daylight savings time kicks in.  In my four years covering the Cavs it was the fewest hours between games on a back-to-back.  And I’ve done them all.  The players had just about 12 hours from when they landed in Cleveland to when they had to be back for pregame stuff.

–So downtown Milwaukee was pretty much shutdown Saturday morning because of a St. Patrick’s Day parade.  Ahem, ahem, it’s next Saturday!  An extra reason for the fine people of Milwaukee to drink, I assume.

–There was some serious action in the locker room before the game Sunday with the Kansas-Texas game wrapping up.  Most players were watching it on the big screens or in their personal screens in the lockers.  And Dwayne Jones’ TV was tuned…to a D-League game.  That’s dedication!  He wasn’t even watching it, he was on the floor working out, but it was funny.

–To the friendly blog reader who came up to me at the end of the game at the Bradley Center: Sorry I couldn’t chat and seemed rude but I was totally on deadline pressure at that moment.  Don’t take it personally.

–I did a little playoff situation breakdown here.  I examined the remaining schedules of the top 10 teams in the East.  Detroit, Indiana and Washington have the toughest finish, Chicago has the easiest.  The Cavs in the middle.  I wouldn’t bet on the Knicks.  Check it out, there’s interesting facts in there.

–Oh, yeah, here’s what I wrote on the Varejao incident. I didn’t think it was a big deal at all and I wasn’t even going to write about it until Mike Brown and LeBron seemed all serious about it. Whatever.

–I have been asked to request some discipline in the comments section.  This is the time of year when the blog shifts into gear, let’s have a discussion of issues and have good, witty and critical conversation.  Let’s not turn it into a bad message board.  Otherwise I may have to turn them off for awhile.