Lebron shouldn’t feel too bad about this loss, though (for him personally, that is – he should feel awful about the team, which is great for the Knicks).

at least there’s no way he’ll sign an extension this summer after this debacle, so he’ll get to free agency next year. keep hope alive!

His handling of Ben Wallace is just comical. Wallace gives up 2+ inches and a decade to Howard. And he’s just too slow to take Lewis on the perimeter.

I got a chuckle whenever the announcers mentioned Pietrus outscoring the Cavs bench. Cleveland’s bench can’t score when they aren’t playing.

West obviously give up a lot of size to Hedo, but also requires Ilgauskas to show hard on screens. Howard rolls to the front of the rim, Varejao slides over to help in the post and leaves Lewis open for the short 3 in the corner. Duncan and Garnett might be able to defend that much space but I doubt if any other pair of bigs in the league can.

With James defending Turkoglu, the screeners defender doesn’t need to show anywhere near as hard, leaving themselves in better position to defend the post, the help defender doesn’t need to leave an open 3 ball from the corner and James goes over top of the screen limiting Hedo to pass or drive for fear that a pull up jumper will be blocked from behind.

It’s certainly not magic but it took the Cavaliers bench the better part of 5 games to figure it out.

As for Detroit and Orlando, no use arguing it but I would have loved to take that bet. Its very unusual for for a team with that bad an efficiency differential to beat a team as good as Orlando. I don’t know what percentage of the time it’s happened but I would say less than 10%. Detroit was a bad team this year, much much worse than in the past five years, with or without those three wins against the Magic.

And despite his freakish athleticism, he hardly looks out of control when driving like Wade does. He’s so solidly built that I wouldn’t put an injury-free career past him.

I’m an 80s child, so I don’t remember the early 90s or before. Have we ever seen athleticism in a man this big before? Shawn Kemp maybe?

“maybe they should get more minutes for Gibson & Szczerbiak?”

Gibson, yes. Szczerbiak, no, he’s a massive liability on both ends. Joe Smith needs to get some real minutes, Mike Brown is doing a lousy job this series.

If the answer for Cleveland is offense, because they don’t have another big perimeter defender to matchup with Lewis/Hedo, then maybe they should get more minutes for Gibson & Szczerbiak? Ramp up the offense, use your speed, run more off the ball picks to set the shooters open against the bigger Magic. Go small, hack a Howard with Z, Varejao, Smith, and Wallace. He’s shooting 71% from the charity stripe, and you figure that’s got to give sooner or later.

I mean Ewing used to get dunked on all the time, but shit he would challenge shots and knock people on their asses. Plus, like almost all the players on those Knick teams, he did a very good job of taking charges. Howard is an excellent rebounder but I am not that impressed with his overall Defense. Dont get me wrong though, I’ll take him on my team any time!!!!