LEBRON JAMES

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With the sellout crowd at The Q rollicking as the Cavaliers were rolling to their seventh consecutive win Saturday night, Cavaliers coach Mike Brown approached his captain and star in the huddle on the bench and extended his hand.

LeBron James, who moments earlier had nailed a 3-pointer to put the Cavs up 13 points over the Utah Jazz, returned the high-five.

"Do you know what that was for?" Brown asked, thinking James might say the basket, the last of his 38 points in the Cavs' 105-93 win.

"It was for diving on the floor for the loose ball," James said with a smile.

"I wanted to hug and kiss him right there," Brown said. "But I didn't think it was the right time."

Once again James was the offensive catalyst in a victory, scoring 16 points in the fourth quarter. But his defense and hustle was just as momentum-turning, the sort of moves Most Valuable Player Awards are built on.

So it was not surprising when for the first time this season the crowd starting chanting "M-V-P" without any prompting from the scoreboard.

Continue reading "Cleveland Cavaliers flying in seventh heaven" »

Cleveland Cavaliers: Offensive juggernaut.

That's not an oxymoron or a joke, it's not even an exaggeration. It is still quite early in the season, but the Cavs improvement on offense is already quite tangible.

After beating the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday, the Cavs found themselves ranked first among Eastern Conference teams in field-goal percentage and third in points scored. At 47 percent and 100 points a game thus far, it is a statistically large jump from last season. In fact, it represents the best offensive start to a season in four years.

Continue reading "Cavaliers' offensive versatility beginning to show" »

Whatever happened to the NBA's Magic vs. Bird rivalry of this century?

Only five years ago, the Cavaliers' LeBron James and Denver's Carmelo Anthony were supposed to save the NBA, the way Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did until Michael Jordan came along.

Now the Cavs' big statement games are against the Celtics and Pistons. The individual matchups at the top of the marquee are James vs. the Lakers' Kobe Bryant or Miami's Dwayne Wade.

The first five players taken in the great 2003 NBA Draft were, in order, James, Darko Milicic, Anthony, Chris Bosh and Wade.

James has been to an NBA Finals, with a team nowhere near as good as this one. Milicic became the new Sam Bowie, the mega-bust taken instead of Michael Jordan by Portland. Wade won an NBA Championship, or at least accepted one when Dallas declined it. Bosh, behind only James and Wade, was a key player on the "Redeem Team," the 2008 Olympic gold medalists.

Anthony's Nuggets are 4-20 in the playoffs with five first-round exits. He might not have reached McGradyean depths, a term coined for Tracy McGrady, who, in Toronto, Orlando and now Houston, has never won a playoff series. But that is only because some of McGrady's futility occurred in the then-weaker East.

"Carmelo hasn't been playing the worst teams in the first round," James said. "He's had San Antonio, the Lakers."

And Minnesota and, ahem, the Los Angeles Clippers.

Continue reading "Bill Livingston: What happened to the LeBron James vs. Carmelo Anthony rivalry?" »

After further review, the Browns didn't quit.

They're just not any good.

Feel better?

Not surprisingly, head coach Romeo Crennel's contention is his team is still playing hard.

The whole discussion about what running back Jamal Lewis and returner / receiver Josh Cribbs said is semantics gone awry, but more on that later.

The Browns are 3-6 either way. But not giving up does beat the alternative.

Continue reading "The Browns story line that won't quit" »

LeBron James is making 41 pretty fashionable.

The issue for the Cavaliers is they all seem willing to be chic. Well, perhaps it isn't a major issue considering the club pieced together its fifth consecutive win Tuesday night, beating the Milwaukee Bucks, 99-93.

Nonetheless, it was not a satisfying victory because James again had to do more than a superstar's share of the heavy lifting. He delivered another huge performance, scoring 41 points for the third time in the past four games and this time doing it with a dizzying array of long-range jumpers.

Yet on a Cavs (6-2) team that has supreme expectations of itself, the mood was appropriately far from chipper. Relying on James to bail the team out time and time again is not a reliable recipe as Cavs teams of the past have learned.

"I'll always take a win, but I think we still need to get better and [this game] shows it," Cavs Coach Mike Brown said. "The group is excited about the win, I don't want to downplay that, but we have to keep building good habits because we're not just doing this for the short term."

Continue reading "LeBron James' 41 points powers Cavs to fifth consecutive win" »