Back to New Jersey

There’s no putting lipstick on this pig … the Cavaliers stunk it up in Game 5 on Wednesday in Cleveland.

Fortunately, the NBA Playoffs are not single-elimination, so hopefully everyone – most notably the ridiculously impetuous boo-birds at The Q – can calm down as the Wine and Gold attempt to close it out on Friday night in Jersey.

No team – even in a Championship run – makes it through the postseason without a clunker or two. The Pistons laid a serious egg one night earlier against the Bulls in a close-out game, and they’re still the odds-on favorite to represent the East. The Cavaliers have lost two games among their last 13 and still lead their Second Round series, 3-2.

On Wednesday night, the Nets shot 1-for-15 in the fourth quarter and still won by 11. The Cavaliers couldn’t hit a shot, couldn’t spring LeBron James and didn’t get squat off their bench. They turned the ball over 18 times and had three more assists as a team than Vince Carter – not exactly known for his generosity – had as an individual.

Yeah, it was ugly.

“We’re human, just like everybody else,” said Coach Brown following the loss. “They came in, they did it. We just didn’t do it. It’s as simple as that. There’s no excuse I can throw at you. They just played better than us tonight and they deserved to win.”

The Playoffs are all about which teams adjust from one game to the next and the Cavaliers have to hit the drawing board to find a way to figure out the Nets. Give Lawrence Frank and his staff credit: they came in with a good game plan on Wednesday. They killed Cleveland with the high pick-and-roll and packed the middle to take the ball out of LeBron James’ hands. They forced Mike Brown to play Zydrunas Ilgauskas sparingly and made the Cavaliers beat them by shooting jumpers.

“I thought our guys did a very, very good job of protecting our paint,” said Coach Frank. “When you do that, obviously you have to live with some jumpers from the perimeter. But our guys were very in-tune. We were very fortunate (Cleveland) missed some shots that, by in large, they can make.”

More than anything, the Cavaliers need to make the Nets pay for double- and triple-teaming LeBron. He would never publicly call his teammates out, but James said as much after Wednesday’s loss.

“They definitely did a good job of defending me,” said James. “Our guys have to make them pay for that. We had a lot of open shots. I created a lot of open shots and we just have to knock them down – myself included. We all have to step up and knock down shots. That would help take away some of the double teams, especially when I’m in the middle of the floor or in the post.”

The best player on the floor for Cleveland for much of the night was Eric Snow, who kept the Cavaliers in the game for most of the second half – getting under Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson’s skin every time they touched the ball (and even when they didn’t.) Snow is easily the Cavaliers’ best on-the-ball defender and he validated his value on Wednesday as he has throughout the postseason.

Wednesday’s loss was not that different from the one in Game 3 – with New Jersey’s Big Three doing most of the damage and LeBron unable to get into the paint or find a shooter to bail him out when he did. The Nets were the more physical, more aggressive team. The Cavaliers adjusted after that 11-point defeat and, hopefully, they’ll put the puzzle together for Game 6 on Friday night.

“It’s one game,” said Larry Hughes, who struggled mightily from the floor on Wednesday night. “We have to go to their place and give a better effort. We understand we can win in their building; we just have to do a better job for 48 minutes. When we step out on the court, we have to understand that this could be the last game instead of looking past and looking forward.”