Barrelling Towards the Break

It was late Friday afternoon before the Cavaliers rolled back into town and several of them, including LeBron James and Daniel Gibson, said that Saturday’s game felt like another road game. They looked like it in the first half. And, the way they’ve been playing on the road, it looked like it in the second half.

The Cavaliers are now 14-4 since Christmas Day and are still the hottest club in the league. In that stretch, they’ve beaten the Mavericks, Spurs, Lakers and Blazers in their gyms. They’ve gone 7-1 at home, including Saturday night’s two-touchdown win over the shorthanded Clippers.

Cleveland’s frontline was dominant, led by LeBron James – who turns in so many spectacular performances that a 28-point, 11-rebound, seven-assist effort seems pretty normal. Since his mortal performance in the season opener against Dallas, LeBron has been the league’s best player and his prolific performance in Portland solidified his status as the front-runner for MVP. (Holding Kobe to 1-for-7 in the fourth quarter one game earlier set him up for the top spot.)

In Sunday’s thriller in Los Angeles, LeBron passed Mark Price and moved into third place on the all-time franchise scoring list and against Portland, he passed John Bagley and is now second all-time in assists.

LeBron has been dominant in the fourth quarter on both sides of the ball, clamping down on the opposition’s best player while carrying the scoring load.

“That was one of my goals coming into the year,” said James following Saturday’s win. “I wanted to become a better defensive player. That’s where it starts in the game and closes games in the fourth quarter.”

The Conference’s Player of the Month leads the league in fourth quarter scoring and in 13 games in January, averaged 32.8 points, 9.2 boards and 6.4 assists per contest.

(Just as an aside: Remember when the knock on LeBron was that he couldn’t hit the clutch shot?)

The trio of LeBron, Drew Gooden and Zydrunas Ilgauskas has been the Cavaliers’ strong suit all season. They’ve got 52 double-doubles between them – Z leading the way with 21. (Drew, 16; LeBron, 15). On Saturday night, they accounted for 64 of the Wine and Gold’s 98 points and 36 of their 50 rebounds.

With Sasha Pavlovic on the shelf, Larry Hughes has stepped up his game, averaging 17.4 ppg – on 41 percent shooting – over the last five games.

The bench has been strong, despite losing Anderson Varejao until some time after the All-Star break. Daniel Gibson is averaging 11.8 ppg, is fourth in the league from beyond the arc and should be a lock for the Three-Point ShootOut. The sophomore from Texas with a million-dollar smile has the perfect demeanor for the contest. He’s canned three or more three-pointers in 19 games this season.

“All (Gibson) needs is a fraction of a second to get that shot off and no matter where he is, it’s good,” praised Coach Mike Brown, before adding,”Mr. Stern and Mr. Jackson, if you guys are watching, I don’t know if you’ve made your selection yet, but he’s a very good three-point shooter and would really make that contest interesting.”

Damon Jones has provided leadership and scoring punch, Devin Brown has been the squad’s Swiss army knife and the rugged Dwayne Jones has been Dwayne Jones – not exactly the charge-taking type in Anderson’s absence.

All these accomplishments will be put to the test before the Cavaliers reach the All-Star break.

The league’s top team rolls into The Q on Tuesday night, as the Big Three come to Cleveland. The Cavaliers handed the Celtics their second loss of the season in an overtime thriller on November 27. Boston got their revenge, holding a LeBron-less Cavalier club to 70 points on December 2 in Beantown.

It doesn’t get much easier from there until the break, either. This week they visit the Western Conference for the final time when they face Yao Ming and the Rockets in H-town. The next night, Cleveland travels to Atlanta, where they’ve already dropped the second-half of a back-to-back. They’ve got a Denver team that LeBron is 2-7 career against, the Magic in Orlando and the Spurs at The Q in the final game before the mid-season classic.

So basically, it ain’t going to be easy. But that’s nothing new for these Cardiac Cavaliers. The season gets more interesting with every turn, and there are plenty of turns left before the break rolls around in less than two weeks.