Round One Game 2: Bulls @ Cavs- Monday, April 19th 8:00 PM

Originally Posted by Mr Cool Grey

Originally Posted by arstyle27

^^^^^

You're not going to, so get it out of your system now.
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At least you take direction well.
 
[h3] Win Together. Band Together. Excel Together. Cheer Together. Defend Together. Work Together. Ohio Together. Believe Together. All Together. 15 More Wins.[/h3]
let's go 
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Chris Broussard of ESPN:
Cavs focused like never before

By Chris Broussard
ESPN The Magazine

CLEVELAND -- I've spent a lot of time around the Cleveland Cavaliers: holding in-depth conversations with members of their coaching staff; working with LeBron James on several feature stories for ESPN The Magazine; hobnobbing at photo shoots with LeBron and his teammates; playing ball at The Q with team employees; chronicling the joy, then pain, of last year's march toward postseason death in Orlando.

But I've never seen the Cavaliers like this.

There is a distinctively different feel around this team -- actually, it runs throughout the entire organization -- as it embarks on its quest for the 2010 NBA championship. Sure, the players, as fun-loving as any in professional sports, still fool around and rib one another. But there's a seriousness, a solemnity, that permeates the franchise like never before.

Have you noticed LeBron hasn't smiled at a news conference since the regular season ended?

On Saturday, as a reporter asked him a long-winded question about the Cavs' dismissal of the Chicago Bulls in Game 1 of their first-round series, LeBron glared at him like a boxer about to touch gloves in the prefight stare-down. It had nothing to do with the reporter and everything to do with the club's grave approach to these playoffs. Hours earlier, someone close to LeBron told me he'd never seen the superstar so serious.

"It's business time, and I know what's at hand," LeBron said Sunday, explaining his demeanor.

Last year, the Cavs, perhaps not knowing how to handle a 66-win season, were fairly giddy about every single victory as they ran through their first eight postseason games. But on Saturday, as they built an 18-point first-half lead, even a low-level team employee was all but yawning.

"So far, so good," he said somberly. "But it's not about the first round."

It's not even about the third round, or just getting to the fourth round. It's championship or bust for Cleveland, and everyone -- from the ball boys to owner Dan Gilbert -- knows it.

One high-ranking member of the organization called it the "Shaq factor," crediting four-time champion Shaquille O'Neal with the team's new tone. While Shaq has taken a subordinate role to LeBron on the court, he's been as vocal as anyone, dispensing his hard-earned title wisdom to both the team and to individual players.

"He's focused," Antawn Jamison said. "He's a guy who's been in this situation numerous times. You sense a different personality, a different approach, a different focus. He's letting us know exactly what we need to do as a team and as individuals to take the next step."

The Cavs won't admit it, but the likelihood is that they're just hungrier now. They thought they were hungry last year and the year before and the year before that, but nothing increases hunger like pain. And last year was the first postseason in which these Cavs truly experienced pain.

Of course, it hurt to lose to Boston in the second round of the 2008 playoffs, but the fact is that the LeBron James-led Cavaliers had always gone further than they were supposed to; they'd always left each season with a silver lining, a moral victory. In 2006, they stunned everyone by forcing a seventh game in their second-round loss to Detroit. A year later, they upset the Pistons to reach the Finals, and in '08, they were the decided underdogs against the Big Three-led Celtics.

But losing when you're expected to lose and losing as the favorite are two different things. And last year, for the first time, James and the Cavs lost a series they were favored to win. That'll make a hungry man ravenous. And that's what has happened to the Cavs.

"I think last year, because of the way they lost in the Eastern Conference finals, this has been the moment that [LeBron's] been waiting for for a long time," Jamison said. "The closer and closer we got to the end of the season, you started to see a different person -- in film sessions, in the huddle, just communicating with the coaching staff and the players. The closer and closer we got, you could sense the demeanor of the whole organization, the team, and everybody change. The focus is at an ultimate high here."

Mo Williams said there's something else behind the club's new tone: confidence.

"We're better than we were last year, so we're more confident than we were last year," Williams said. "Going into the playoffs last year, we knew that we could do it. That was kind of our mind frame -- we could do it. But there was the slight chance that if we get the wrong matchup, things would probably go the other way; that was a possibility, which it did. But this year, we're confident. We feel like we've got all the pieces, and it's just up to us to continue to play the right way."

That word "continue" is key, because the Cavs almost always start games playing the right way. The league's best first-quarter team, they routinely jump out to big leads only to let up as the game wears on. Saturday was no exception, as they ran to a 32-18 advantage over the Bulls, but were outscored by a point over the final three quarters.

And who can forget last year's Eastern Conference finals, when the Cavs built 14-point first-quarter leads in Games 1 and 2 against Orlando, but wound up splitting those contests because of poor third quarters?

"I don't know if it's because our guys are extremely juiced when they come out and they play at the highest level they can because of the excitement of the game and the intensity," said Cavs coach Mike Brown, who admitted that his team might sometimes play the scoreboard rather than the opponent. "I think we've gotten better over the years with our third quarters, and hopefully, we won't have too many lulls in the third quarters throughout our playoff run."

Of course, the Cavs are who they are, and that means they won't entirely cut out the cutting up. Before Sunday's practice, Shaq teased Brown, who hasn't shaved his face or his head in three days, about his receding hairline.

"That hurt my feelings a little bit," Brown said with a laugh.

There's nothing wrong with a little joking, even during the playoffs, even when you're more focused than ever.




David Aldridge of TNT and NBA.com:


With a championship as his sole focus, LeBron James has the look of a winner-in-waiting.

Posted Apr 19 2010 10:20AM

CLEVELAND -- He has The Look.

It is the look that Larry Bird had in 1983, and Magic Johnson had in 1985, and Isiah Thomas had in 1988, and that Michael Jordan had in 1990, and that Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant had in 2002, and that Tim Duncan had in 2007.

It is the look of imperviousness, of arrogance, of inevitability. It is the look that states, silently, that whatever has come before no longer matters, and what is yet to come isn't a challenge. It is the look of now, that a championship is coming, and maybe several before the run is done, and there is nothing that anyone, or any team, can do about it.

LeBron has The Look.

It is a look born from heartbreaking, searing playoff losses, forming callouses to cover the pain -- the pain of losing in the Finals in 2007, when James was precocious as a teenager -- he damn near still was a teenager -- but his Cavaliers really weren't ready for Prime Time, their halfcourt offense strangled slowly on national TV by the veteran Spurs; the pain of losing Game 7 of the conference semifinals in Boston two years ago, when the Celtics had the Look and Paul Pierce had the game of his life, and the pain of losing Game 6 of the conference finals in Orlando a year ago, when James walked off the court as the Magic celebrated their conference title.

It is the way of the NBA, the crucible, where almost every championship team in the last three decades had to pay its dues, show its mettle, prove that it was worthy. The Cavaliers have paid, and shown, and proven.

"We have the look of a champion," James allowed after Game 1 Saturday. "We have a couple of guys that have rings on this team. Shaq has four, and Leon (Powe) has one. We have a couple of coaches that's been (to the Finals) and has won NBA championships. We're looking forward to the challenge. This is why we're here and this is what we've prepared for."

But Dwight Howard has The Look, too, and that's why, for all the talk about how hard the Western Conference is -- and it is -- the East's playoffs figure to be a titanic struggle of wills, James' and Howard's, the second act in a play that may run for years and years and years, like the Fantasticks. Each has been to a Finals, and knows now what it takes to make another one. Unless you have James or Howard, you're looking up, with James 25 and Howard 24. (As one executive pointed out this weekend, even if Dwyane Wade stays in Miami this summer, and the Heat adds another piece to play with him, it still won't have a player capable of guarding Howard.)

Having The Look does not always mean your team is going to win the championship. The Cavaliers of a generation ago, of Mark Price and Brad Daugherty and Larry Nance, had it. Karl Malone had it in his MVP season in 1997. But Michael Jordan patented The Look in that generation of players, and his Look trumped their Looks. (I still, to this day, regret there wasn't a Game 7 in Salt Lake City in the 1998 Finals, just to see what would have happened. Jordan never played in a Game 7 of the Finals. He deserved a Game 7. So did that Utah team.) But it does mean that the team with the best chance of beating you is your own.

O'Neal has deferred to James all season, let him do most of the talking to the team. But in the last month, even though he hasn't been playing, teammates have noticed a difference in his demeanor and focus.

"Big Fella is a beast down there," Powe said, "and always talking to everybody about the playoff basketball experience, what he had and how he got it done, and how his team got it done. And he said he seen the same thing in us."

Shaq has had his time as the Man -- "my track record has stated that I've run a lot of Fortune 500 companies," he said Sunday. "Laker Corporation, Miami Corporation. Took the Orlando Corporation where it's never been" -- and with his background, O'Neal appreciates how close the Cavaliers are this season. He came to Cleveland as the last best hope to solidify the Cavs, make them title-worthy. He knows the stakes; win, and James is much more likely to stay. Lose, and all bets are off. That's why Shaq was working out at 11 at night on his own at the end of the regular season, after working out at the team's facility during the day, and why he hasn't had a cheeseburger in seven weeks.

"This run, there's no room for mistakes," O'Neal said. "And I'll be damned if I'm going to be the mistake."

The last decade has been building to this moment, from the years when James dominated at St. Vincent-St. Mary's, to when the Cavs, to put it charitably, tanked a season to make sure they got James with the first pick in 2003, to the years with Carlos Boozer and Ricky Davis and Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall and Drew Gooden and Sasha Pavlovic. Though many have come to town to try, it may be impossible to accurately state how important James is to the collective psyche of the city.

"I went to watch him in high school," O'Neal said. "Ron Harper, we came to play the Cavs, and he said, 'Why don't you come see this kid?' Went to watch him in high school. He was sort of like me in high school. If he wanted to, he could have scored 60, 70 points. But what I liked about the kid is, he had a little guy over in the corner. Not going to go to college. Never going to go to the pros. LeBron crossed his man up and he could have thrown it down and gotten the crowd in the game. But what did he do? He kicked it to his dude for the three. And that's why his team won the state championship."

Mike Brown often states, as his mentor Gregg Popovich states about Tim Duncan, that James allows him to coach him. The two are now hand in glove. When Brown wanted to use the first part of the season to experiment with different lineups, to see who could and couldn't play with one another, James was on board, even if it meant a few losses that could have cost Cleveland home-court advantage. But it helped. Now the Cavaliers know they can play O'Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas together against the Lakers, or against Boston, because it worked in the regular season.

"There was a concern (about home court)," James said. "As a competitor, of course. But when you've been in this league for a long time, and you understand what this league is all about, you understand situations like that. Team chemistry, to try and find that as quickly as possible, is more important than wins and losses, and that's what we were trying to find at the beginning."

Today, it's closer to the end. So many moving parts, all leading to this moment, when LeBron flashes the Look and a whole state holds its breath. Eight weeks. Sixteen wins.

"It's game time now," James said. "Right now's the time."



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so the clowns realized that clowns don't win???

and yet people were saying CP was talking out of his #%%?
 
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