Who are these guys?
Same guys they were at the same time last season.
It’s true. Even as the NBA’s newest marquee team with Shaquille O’Neal joining LeBron James, and its hottest with 18 victories in 22 games, the Cavaliers aren’t dramatically different.
James still scores or assists on 44 percent of their points.
Unlike last season, when four Cavaliers averaged double figures, only three are now and one — Mo Williams — was just lost for at least a month.
O’Neal, who has a physical presence and puts fouls on opposing centers, is not, as Charles Barkley called him, “the same player as Zydrunas Ilgauskas.”
Nevertheless, Ilgauskas’ numbers last season were better than Shaq’s this season (12.9 points and 7.5 rebounds to 10.7 and 6.7.)
Last season’s team ran away with the East and beat out the favored Lakers for the best record — which is likely again this season.
Of course, the Magic dumped those Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals. Without James’ last-second 3-pointer in Game 2, the Magic would have swept them.
The Cavaliers upgraded with O’Neal and Ilgauskas in tandem and Anthony Parker and J.J. Hickson instead of Ben Wallace , Sasha Pavlovic and Wally Szczerbiak — but not as much as the Lakers and Celtics upgraded.
The Cavaliers yearned for Rasheed Wallace , but the Celtics grabbed him before the Cavs knew what hit them, along with Marquis Daniels and Shelden Williams .
Meanwhile, the Lakers effectively added a 7-footer with Andrew Bynum going from last postseason’s 6.3 points and 3.7 rebounds per game to 15.3 and 8.4.
That leaves the Cavaliers as the humble little team … that’s still kicking them around, having swept the Lakers and zoomed past the Celtics, who led them by 11/2 games on Christmas and now trail them by 31/2.
There’s a simple reason, aside from the presence of one man, er, superman:
The Cavaliers play harder.
The Lakers show more urgency than last season, but that hardly puts them on the Cavaliers’ level. In Thursday’s game the team with O’Neal, Ilgauskas, Hickson and Anderson Varejao outrebounded the team with Bynum, Pau Gasol , Ron Artest and Lamar Odom by five.
The Celtics played as hard as the Cavaliers — when they were younger. Now the Celtics are the Spurs of the East, 5-8 since Christmas as coach Doc Rivers nurses Kevin Garnett with Wallace out too.
The Cavaliers’ gung-ho spirit flows, of course, from James. Aside from everything else he does, as a leader he’s the closest thing to Magic Johnson since Magic Johnson.
Unlike Kobe Bryant, a Michael Jordan-style leader by intimidation, James is a positive reinforcer. It’s a blast being around James, who’s all fun all the time with his team-picture skits, break dances, et al., infuriating opponents but keeping teammates in stitches.
It’s great to be on his side, as it has been since he was at St. Vincent-St. Mary High in Akron, Ohio, where he readily gave up the ball to four guys from the neighborhood.
“LeBron plays with joy and intensity, which is difficult and rare,” ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy said. “Combine that with an A-plus skill set and you have an all-time great player and leader.”
There is a downside for teams that play so hard in the regular season. Their advantage fades in the playoffs, when everyone plays hard (with the occasional exception of the Lakers).
The playoffs are about matchups, like that Magic high-pick-and-roll the Cavaliers still can’t cover.
Before their Christmas romp over the Lakers that turned everything around, the hole in the Cavaliers’ defense looked so huge, ABC’s Mark Jackson called them “a disaster waiting to happen.”
In a loss in Memphis where Mike Conley scooted past O’Neal for the winning layup, Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins actually said of O’Neal, “I was hoping he would still be in the game, so we could (put) him in the pick-and-roll.”
The Cavaliers called around, offering Ilgauskas’ expiring contract for the Wizards’ Antawn Jamison and the Hornets’ David West .
When they missed out on the Warriors’ Stephen Jackson , who went to the Bobcats, James broke with protocol to acknowledge he would have loved playing with him.
They fell in Houston the night after the loss to the Grizzlies, dropping them to 15-7.
Since then, they’re 18-4.
Riding on this is James’ future, and the NBA’s balance of power, the Pundits’ Blue Plate Special.
The consensus has been James will stay. My guess is he’s gone if the Cavaliers don’t make the Finals.
I would give the Cavs a 50-50 chance to get out of the East with the Celtics limping toward spring and the Magic in search of themselves.
They said it: The Nets’ Devin Harris , on his 3-39 team’s hope of luring a big free agent: “Obviously, we’re trying to create as much cap space as we can for next year, but we’re still trying to be competitive and end the year on a good note, so it’s a little bit of a Catch-22. … “
Pistons coach John Kuester , on talented, flighty Charlie Villanueva : “We need him to focus on some of the things that need to be done on the floor. They don’t come no better than Charlie Villanueva as a person.”
Rivers, on Garnett’s impact on the Celtics’ defense: “Even when we get a stop, if we don’t do it the right way, you hear his voice: ‘We got away with that, we want to be good, we don’t want to be lucky.’ … Kevin’s the king of the talk, and Kevin forces everyone else to talk.”
Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, whose team is on a 38-victory pace: “We certainly want to have cap room to be a player in the free agent market, but you’re not going to attract free agent players to a bad team. So I think it’s important for us to have as good a year as we possibly could have.”
———-
mheisler@tribune.com
