Disappointment

 

In a few months, basketball fans might be able to look back on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ season and think of the successes.  They had the best record in franchise history at 66-16.  They had the league’s MVP in LeBron James, and the NBA’s coach of the year in Mike Brown.  They finished the regular season with the league’s best record.  Maybe that will happen in a few months because right now, the only word I can find to describe the season is disappointment.

 

This comes after yesterday’s 103-90 loss in Game 6 to the Orlando Magic, who advanced to the NBA Finals by winning the best of seven series, four games to two.  The Cavs’ season ends one series prematurely.

 

LeBron James had nothing left after his scintlilating first five games, finishing with 25 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists.  These are great numbers for many, but judging by the standards The King sets for himself, they were rather ordinary.  The Cavs did not try to attack the basket, and they didn’t use the same set up which worked very well for the team in the fourth quarter of Game 5, setting up James at the free throw line, and letting him dictate the offense.

 

They also picked a bad time to be horrible from the charity stripe, hitting just 11 of 22 free throws.  Parlay that with getting hammered on the boards, 47-34, and you get a 13 point loss. 

 

The Cavs’ big men got in foul trouble early, with Anderson Varajao, the team’s best interior defender, getting two fouls very early in the first quarter.  Delonte West played hard all the way to the end, and Mo Williams stats look good in the box score, but he was unable to get it going early.  All in all, the wine and gold picked a lousy time to play their worst game of the series.

 

Much will be said about the lack of support James received from his teammates, and for the most part they didn’t play well, but the Cavaliers lost this series on the defensive end.  The Magic routinely exceeded 100 points per game, well above what Mike Brown’s crew normally allows.  They simply had no answer for the incredible three point shooting by Orlando.

 

Every basketball coach will tell you they are trained to allow teams to take 25 foot jump shots rather than get beat at the rim, but that conventional wisdom goes out the window against the Magic, who shot over 40% from behind the arc on the series.   The Magic play against the grain by taking so many threes, but they are awfully good at it, and if they are hitting from that distance, they are a tough matchup for everyone. 

 

I don’t blame Brown for the defeat, but I do have to question how he used James, runnerup for the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year, on that end of the floor.  He started using #23 on Rafer Alston, which would allow him to help on double teams, but after the first game, he should have been shifted to Rashard Lewis or Hedo Turkoglu who killed the wine and gold from the perimeter.  Also, Joe Smith should have received more time as his shooting touch from the perimeter was needed.  In the end, the three point shooting of the Magic made him useless.

 

After game one, the conventional wisdom was to make Howard make free throws instead of dunks.  Last night, he did both, getting six dunks, and making 12 of 16 from the line.  If he can make free throws consistently, he will join the trio of James, Kobe Bryant, and Dewayne Wade as the game’s greatest players. 

 

When you think about it, this series changed when Lewis hit that three in the first game.  After that, the Cavaliers played like a desparate team, trying to regain the home court advantage they played so hard for from the first game of the season.  If that shot doesn’t fall, it is a different series, and one more game would be played on Monday night. 

 

Instead, a potentially great season became a bitter disappointment.

 

JK