Cavs Don't Know Who They Are
'We're Still Trying to Find An Identity'

By Michael Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 18, 2008

There are many memorable images from Monday night in Philadelphia, where the Cleveland Cavaliers wrapped up the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference -- and home-court advantage over the Washington Wizards in the first round -- with the help of a controversial foul call in the final second.

The 76ers angrily reemerged from their locker room, tucking their jerseys back in, to watch Cavaliers guard Devin Brown hit two free throws with 0.2 of a second remaining. LeBron James leaped from his three-point stance, lifting his index finger and rushing to embrace Brown. Philadelphia point guard Andre Miller punted the basketball while the Cavaliers gleefully bounced off the court to celebrate a 91-90 victory.

But a scene that is often overlooked is from the third quarter, when Cavaliers guard Sasha Pavlovic suffered a severely sprained ankle and had to leave in a wheelchair. That injury seemed to sum up this difficult hangover season for the defending Eastern Conference champions and explains why James was so relieved to escape with a win.

"We were due for a break," James said afterward.

The Cavaliers (45-37) haven't had much go in their favor this season, resulting in the team winning five fewer games than a year ago and dropping two seeds in the standings.

James became the first player in franchise history to lead the league in the scoring at 30 points per game, but that accomplishment doesn't make up for a sputtering season dominated by a revolving door of injuries and a trade-deadline deal that has Cleveland stuck in neutral as it prepares to host the Wizards in Game 1 tomorrow afternoon.

"It's been a unique situation because I never been through anything like that," said center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, a 10th-year veteran and the longest-tenured Cavalier. "We just have no consistency. We're still trying to find an identity for ourselves."

The season began with Pavlovic and Anderson Varejao involved in contract disputes: Pavlovic missed training camp and Varejao didn't sign until early December. Then, rotation players Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall, Pavlovic, Varejao and Daniel Gibson were all forced to miss 13 or more games each because of injuries.

Cavaliers General Manager Danny Ferry attempted to shake up a stagnant stretch by dealing Hughes, Drew Gooden, Marshall and Ira Newble in a monster, three-team trade with Chicago and Seattle that yielded Ben Wallace, Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West and Joe Smith.

The trade was supposed to move the Cavaliers closer to championship contention and provide some much-needed help for James, who often is portrayed as the one-man show who single-handedly led the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals last season.

The results have been lukewarm at best, with the Cavaliers finishing the season 15-13 and Coach Mike Brown constantly shuffling his lineups to figure out what works. Brown has used 21 starting lineups this season, including nine since the trade, which sacrificed two regular starters. It hasn't helped that Ilgauskas, Wallace and Gibson missed time with injuries. Pavlovic is out for the next two to three weeks.

"I'm not trying to kid anybody. It's tough having the new bodies you have when have your starting lineup gets changed on top of that, and then you add injuries," Brown said.

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."