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Cavs Don't Know Who They Are
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The only new acquisition that has increased his production since the deal is West, the least- heralded player. Wallace, who won a championship in Detroit in 2004, has seen a decline in his rebounding and scoring from when he was in Chicago. Szczerbiak's shot didn't follow him from Seattle. Smith has put up comparable numbers to what he did with the Bulls.
"Basketball is a simple game. Sometimes we can complicate it by trying to overanalyze the situation," Wallace said. "I think we're thinking too much, trying to find out who we are and what we can do, who is going to be the leader."
Wallace was asked if it should be obvious who the leader of the team is. Maybe it's the guy wearing No. 23? "Oh yeah, in some cases, it would be obvious," Wallace said without mentioning James's name. "But everybody got to step up and try to carry a little bit more weight. We can't put all the pressure on one guy to go out there and lead this team. He's doing a great job but sometimes we forget, he's still only 23 [years old]."
James's scoring also has dropped slightly since the trade -- 29.7 points in 27 games, compared to 30.2 in his first 48 games. He scored more than 30 points in just three of his final 12 games -- a period in which the Cavaliers went 6-6 -- and has battled a nagging back injury, which he said would be fine in the playoffs.
"Guys are still learning each other," James said. "Making a trade, any team knows, it's tough to automatically gain chemistry. You have to go through a lot of games, not just 20-something games to find chemistry."
Brown admitted that his team enters this postseason with "a different mood" than last season, when the Cavaliers were more familiar with each other and confident after pushing the Pistons to seven games in the conference semifinals the year before.
It has been difficult to build from the experience of getting swept in the NBA Finals, Brown said, because "we don't have the same team. We have a new team. We've been trying to find a nice rhythm with the guys we have. That hasn't happened. But we know we're better than what we've played. I'm confident that we can get it done."
