First-Round Futurama

Last year, at this time, the Cavaliers were eyeing up the three-seed in the Eastern Conference’s version of Bracketology. Getting in touch with the third spot in the East this year – trailing the Magic by 5.5 games with 11 to play – would require a creative imagination.

This year, the Cavaliers have been locked into the fourth-seed pretty much all season. Boston got off to a great start and stayed strong, Detroit has been their steady selves and Orlando, unlike last year, kept their foot on the gas all season.

The Cavaliers have battled through one obstacle after another this season and now find themselves in the position of checking the rear-view mirror for their first round future. Some players and coaches might tell you that they’re taking it one game at a time and not looking back at the standings. Then there’s LeBron James …

“You have no choice but to follow it,” said LeBron. “You have the standings in our locker room, you watch SportsCenter and they show the standings.”

Of course, there’s nothing the Cavaliers can do about it, but watch. “It’s going to go back and forth over the next 12 games, so we’re just going to hold down the fort and see what happens,” added James.

For most of the second half of the season, it looked like the Wine and Gold would be heading north of the border of the first round. The Raptors have been close enough to the Cavaliers to keep an eye on, but never got close enough to threaten homecourt in late April.

The Cavaliers dropped the Raptors on Friday night to take the season series over Toronto, 3-1. And just recently, the streaking Wizards club recently overtook the Raptors for the fifth-seed.

The Wizards are an entirely different animal as far as the Cavaliers first-round opponent. They’ve been Cleveland’s first-round foes for the past two seasons. In 2005-06, the two clubs faced off in a bare-knuckled battle, with LeBron James and Gilbert Arenas staging an epic duel, and Damon Jones finishing off Washington with a series-ending 17-footer in Game 6.

Last year, the Wizards were depleted with late-season injuries and the Wine and Gold rolled them in four straight.

This season, the two clubs have split four games. Each team has won a nail-biter and each has blown the other out at home. And of course, there’s the DeShawn Stevenson quote – that LeBron is “overrated” – simmering beneath the surface. If James gets another crack at Stevenson, you can believe that LeBron will be a man on a mission.

The good news for the red-hot Wizards is that Gilbert Arenas is scheduled to return before the postseason. The bad news is that although they’ve won six of seven – including a convincing win over Detroit on Sunday – they still have to make their West Coast junket where they’ll face the Blazers, Lakers and Jazz.

The team that’s confounded everyone is the scorching Sixers, who are just 1.5 games behind the Wizards. Philly has lost just two games in the month of March and are 18-7 since the start of February. The Cavaliers will get an up-close-and-personal look at Maurice Cheeks scrappy squad on Sunday night at The Q and once more before the regular season ends.

While the Cavaliers will have one eye fixed on their first round opponent, they still have to right their own ship. They’ve won nine straight at The Q, but have dropped five consecutive on the road. Most likely, they will only have homecourt in the first round. After that, they’ll have to win on the road to advance.

“I’m worried because if we expect to be a very good playoff team we have to know how to win on the road,” said a concerned Mike Brown following Saturday’s loss in Milwaukee. “For some reason – and it doesn’t matter who we are playing – we think we can just show up and turn it on at the end of the game instead of coming out and playing the right way.”

The Cavaliers should be getting Boobie Gibson back within a week and Ben Wallace will probably get plenty of time to rest his bad back before the NBA’s second season tips off. When it does, Mike Brown hopes to have his club firing on all cylinders – at home and on the road.

A Good Problem

Maybe when the smoke clears and we look back on this season, we’ll look at in stages.

One of the biggest trades in franchise history is less than three weeks old, and the Cavaliers still have (at least) one more phase to go through before the regular season ends. That stage will begin when the troika of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Daniel Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic make their eventual return to the lineup.

Coach Mike Brown may have some ‘splaining to do as he tries to dole out minutes, but that’s what they call “a good problem” – like the Browns (finally) have at the quarterback position.

All three are integral to the Cavaliers’ return to the top of the Eastern Conference heap – each contributed to last year’s run. Ilgauskas and Gibson were having excellent seasons. Boobie was coming off a fantastic All-Star Weekend and Ilgauskas was having one of his best seasons in an-already exceptional nine-year career.

Sasha’s season has been uneven. After a contract holdout, he didn’t recapture last year’s aggressiveness until, ironically, the final two games before he got hurt. But with the trade of Larry Hughes to Chicago, Pavlovic’s perimeter defense will be needed now more than ever.

Mike Brown has made every indication that Sasha will be in the starting lineup when he returns. Obviously, Big Z will. Daniel Gibson will get his usual minutes, bringing fireworks off the bench. So, crunch the numbers …

Within days, your starting lineup will most likely be LeBron James, Ilgauskas, Pavlovic, Delonte West and Ben Wallace – provided his back spasms aren’t a lingering problem.

Anderson Varejao, Joe Smith and Gibson are all the immediate first options off the bench. Devin Brown is too versatile and has been simply too good this season to cut his minutes. Damon Jones is having easily his best season as a Cavalier and Wally Szczerbiak is the guy Cleveland brought in for shooting off the bench.

Dwayne Jones and Eric Snow haven’t gotten a ton of regular season minutes, but with defense at a premium in the postseason, Coach Brown will probably find a place for each somewhere in the rotation.

That’s a lot of Cavaliers to stuff into 48 minutes of basketball. And speaking of basketball, there’s only one of those allowed on the floor at a time.

That’s also a lot of options if you’re Mike Brown. And a lot of people to prepare for if you’re an opponent.

Ilgauskas’ presence will do wonders for the entire frontcourt, specifically Wallace. And Z’s return will also move Anderson – who’s had two excellent games as a starter against Indy and Portland – back to his normal position. Joe Smith has been rock solid and it’s starting to look like he’ll have a good night, every night.

The backcourt is where it’s going to be touch-and-go for the Wine and Gold. Everyone is playing well enough to warrant big minutes, and it would be a crime to cut floor time for, say, Damon Jones or Szczerbiak or Devin Brown.

But the Cavaliers are going to have to make it work. Depth is never a bad thing. But lack of chemistry and cohesion can be.

Danny Ferry has given his long-time friend and confidant the pieces that can hopefully take the Cavaliers to the next level. (There’s only one level left.) Now, Mike Brown can prove all his doubters wrong, make this work, and make another run at the Ring.

Fitting all the pieces of this puzzle together is going to be a problem. But it’s a good one to have heading into the final stage of the regular season.

Class Reunion

Anyone who knew Drew Gooden and Larry Hughes roots for them to succeed in Chicago and beyond. Media-wise, they were genuine, forthcoming guys – back-to-back winners of Cleveland writers’ prestigious “Austin Carr Award.” Drew Gooden has been here since LeBron’s second season and Larry, through the two postseason years of LBJ’s career.

But certain situations and certain individuals just don’t mesh. If they did, we’d all be married to our first girlfriend.

Hughes and Gooden made their first return since the Feb. 27 blockbuster deal that sent them – along with Shannon Brown and Cedric Simmons, who both got DNP-CDs yesterday – to Chicago in exchange for Ben Wallace and Joe Smith. After just over a week, and based on Sunday’s ballgame, it seems like each team is satisfied. Same for the individuals, although Drew seemed a little homesick.

Gooden was constantly in the center of trade rumors, although he was completely content in Cleveland after a nomadic start to his career. Hughes – not so much.

And Larry made no bones that he was glad for the change of scenery.

“I’m happy now,” said the laid-back Hughes, who led Chicago with 23 points on 40 percent shooting. “I’m able to just be me. It’s a fresh place, and it’s a style of play that fits me better. I’m happy. I’m cool with everything.”

Drew had a pretty Drew-like performance, doubling up with 11 and 10. He admitted almost going to the wrong locker room. He got his first start with the Bulls and got a warm reception when he was introduced. “It shows that the fans recognize what I’ve put in here. I might have left, but the banner in the rafters ain’t going nowhere – and I was a part of it.”

Larry didn’t get mauled at The Q like Carlos Boozer does – rightfully so. But Hughes, because of his salary and expectations when he arrived, was booed while he was with the Wine and Gold. He was prepared for the catcalls either way, joking that “if they’re booing now, I’m doing something good.”

Larry was never happy with his role as point guard in Cleveland and he’ll be off the ball for the Bulls. Drew needed to be needed. He’ll get that in Chicago, too.

The always-pragmatic LeBron James put it succinctly before Sunday afternoon’s tip-off. “I had mixed feelings (about the trade), because the guys that I lost, I grew a good bond with those guys,” said James. “But as professionals you have to move on, and we did. And we’re very excited about the guys we have here now.”

Those “guys” had a solid game in the clutch 95-86 win, especially Joe Smith. After going scoreless in the first three quarters, Smith drilled three straight short jumpers as the Cavaliers erased an eight-point fourth-quarter deficit.

Another new guy – Wally Szczerbiak – also had eight points in the fourth. Wally, who became a father for the third time one day earlier, had his best game as a Cavalier, joining LeBron in double-figures with 17 points. For the first time since he arrived from Seattle, Szczerbiak looked like he was having fun.

“I’ve been so amped up and excited for these games that maybe (the birth of his son, Maximus Jack) just slowed me down a little bit,” said the former Miami (OH) star. “There was just so much else going on that I didn’t really press a little too much in the game.”

One major trait that the new infusion of players all share – that perhaps the outgoing players did not share – is “urgency.” The Cavaliers acquired veterans who really want the ring. Ben Wallace has tasted the ultimate success, the other three players have been chasing it, whether it’s been four years (Delonte West), eight years (Szczerbiak) or twelve (Smith).

The Cavaliers are 3-2 since the trade, but they’ve been battling the injury bug that struck once again on Sunday. Already without the services of Daniel Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic – both critical to any sort of playoff run – the Cavaliers got news that Zydrunas Ilguaskas will be out at least a week with a strained back.

The Cavaliers play the second of three straight mid-week back-to-backs on the road when they travel to New York to face the Knicks on Wednesday. Cleveland had one of their worst losses of the season at Madison Square Garden back in December.

As for Drew Gooden and Larry Hughes, hopefully the fans didn’t get too sentimental about their return. The Cavaliers will see the Bulls three more times in the next 37 days. And in two of those tilts, Hughes and Gooden will have the sold-out crowd on their side.