Putting Some Muscle in It

By Michael Wilbon
Wednesday, April 26, 2006

CLEVELAND

Rarely if ever does a play eight minutes into a playoff game transform a team, but that's exactly what happened Tuesday night to dramatically alter not only Game 2 but perhaps the rest of this Washington Wizards-Cleveland Cavaliers series.

LeBron James and the Cavaliers were having their way with the Wizards for the second straight game, leading 19-8 with 3 minutes 47 seconds left in the first quarter when the Wizards did what they should have done Saturday, something teams used to do all the time in the playoffs.

They thumped him. That's right, Brendan Haywood grabbed LeBron's upper body and not only stopped him from sashaying to the basket for an easy hoop, but turned his face into a mask of momentary anger and game-long frustration.

It's no coincidence that the Wizards, moments after that foul, went on an 18-0 run that wiped out a 15-point deficit and the notion that the Golden Child is untouchable and infallible. It's no coincidence that LeBron missed 18 of 25 shots and never again went to the Wizards' basket like he owned it and them. He missed one breakaway dunk, going for the two-hand reverse where he could look back down the court and see if any Wizards were coming to take his head off. In football, which LeBron played a ton of in high school, they would have said, "He heard footsteps." Players, particularly the great ones, never admit they hear footsteps, but most do, especially when they're young and are feeling what it's like to get hammered playoff-style for the very first time.

Once upon a time, the Detroit Pistons employed "Jordan Rules" and threw Michael Jordan around like a rag doll -- and as great as Jordan was, it took him four tries to get past the Pistons in the playoffs.

The Wizards, if they're serious about winning this series, need to employ some LeBron Rules ASAP. He won't be happy about it and they shouldn't care.

Look, Haywood didn't go Bill Laimbeer on the kid when he fouled him. In Cleveland, they screamed bloody murder, called it a clothesline. You'd have thought James had been taken out by Night Train Lane. In fact, Haywood, who is by most accounts a rather gentle soul, tried to hold up LeBron, keep the kid from taking a header after getting him 'round the upper chest and shoulders.

For 30 years, they called those "hard playoff fouls."

Actually, when I asked former Knick and former Bull Charles Oakley, a native son of Cleveland, about the Haywood foul, he said: "What hard foul? I didn't see it." Oakley was sitting on the baseline. He saw it, all right. But to Oakley's old-school eyes, Haywood's foul was a love tap. Boy, has the NBA changed. LeBron later said, "I can take those hits." And physically, of course, he can.

But LeBron isn't used to being fouled like this. NBA players, not counting Ron Artest, hardly ever foul hard in the regular season. LeBron, remember, was playing only the second playoff game of his career, and in the first one the Wizards didn't get close enough to him on defense to read the script on the front of his jersey, much less hit him.

But Haywood hit him a little bit -- hit him hard enough anyway. "Laid the wood to him," is the way Caron Butler described it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning the kid's determination or saying he got scared. But the foul rattled him. You hear players talk about knocking opponents off their rhythm. The foul certainly appeared to do that to LeBron.

Yes, he hit some big shots down the stretch to keep his team close; the kid is nothing if not tenacious. But he wasn't firing pinpoint passes. He wasn't dominating the game with fearless drives to the basket. The Wizards limited him to two assists and forced him into 10 turnovers.

If the Wizards are going to win this series, they're going to have to follow a formula: get 70 points or more from Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Butler, and force James to work as hard as he ever has in his brief professional basketball career.

The Wizards didn't come close to doing any of that in Game 1 and lost big. The Wizards did that beautifully in Game 2 to send the series back to Washington even at 1-1.

And when it moves back there Friday for Game 3, the game within a game of What-to-do-with-LeBron will be hypercritical to the outcome of this series.

John Chaney, the wise old coach from Temple and a man who surely isn't afraid to have one of his kids foul an opponent's star, called Eddie Jordan after Game 1 and told the Wizards' coach not to get caught up in the circus. In other words, don't become a prop for LeBron James.

So, in Game 2, the Wizards toughened. Okay, nobody's going to confuse Haywood's foul with Wes Unseld closing down the lane, but everything's relative. LeBron came perilously close to another triple-double, what with his 21 points, 9 rebounds and 10 turnovers. The Wizards committed to playing him straight up with Jared Jeffries and Butler, and got away from the ineffective double-teaming.

As Jordan said: "We had to almost encourage him to take the jump shot, but we're not going to allow him to hit cutters going into the paint. For the most part, we played him straight up. We weren't going to load up. We weren't going to double him."

Everybody on the Wizards' bench seemed to have an edge during Game 2. Jordan, the picture of patience almost always, went absolutely nuts a couple of times, not counting the time some fool sitting courtside said something offensive to Jordan at halftime when the team was leaving the court. Fortunately, several of Cleveland's fine uniformed officers heard it, and threw the bum out of the arena.

This isn't to suggest that losing one's cool should be part of a game plan. But playing with force and bad intentions are necessary in the playoffs. And while most of us are caught up in praising the Golden Child, especially after Game 1, the Wizards ought to hate hearing every word of it.

Near the basketball arena, which folks here call "The Q," there is a building adorned with what appears to be a 10-story Nike ad of LeBron that has the word "Witnesses" below his soaring image. It refers to the slogan, "We're all witnesses," which is the theme of sorts of his importance around here. As in, "We're all witnesses to history, to this new Hoops God that we have and the rest of you do not."

Jordan, describing what he felt when he first saw the ad while en route to the arena, said, "It intimidated a 51-year-old on the bus."

But he hoped his players, many of them half his age, weren't intimidated, that they could keep the game plan in mind and add a little muscle when necessary.

Asked if the Wizards will keep fouling LeBron hard, Jordan smiled and said: "No -- we're going to hug him and kiss him and show him the way to the basket. He's a terrific guy and we love him. No, we're not going to do anything flagrant. We're not the toughest team in the NBA. We're not very physical. But tonight, we brought it out. We're not going to flagrantly foul anybody on purpose. It's going to be good sportsmanship, hard fouls. No layups."