May the Road Rise To Eat You

And that, my friends, is how you execute a double jinx. Tonight in Cleveland, LeBron James continued to mock my MVP selection of him, but the other Cavs showed up with a vengeance. All four pieces of the mid-year trade (Smith, Sczerbiak, Wallace and West) came up big, and the Celtics continued their playoff-long road sleeping sickness.

Something I like to do when I watch pro hoop is give a lot of focus to the first half of the second quarter. It's rare that you think too much about that time of the game, since it's when the bench players get their time, and everyone likes to look at fourth quarter scoring as the be-all and end-all of NBA existence. But it's that bench time that frequently sets up everything, and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that tonight's game was decided there.

From the start of the game, the Cavs came out hot; West and Wallace pushed things nicely, and no Celtic looked good early, with Rondo and Perkins looking especially lost. By the end of the quarter, it was 32-13... and by the half, that lead more or less stood, after a 22-20 Celtics bump in the second, despite a pretty despicable James Posey flagrant necktie, choke and toss on James.

By holding the lead, the Cavs were able to keep the arena buzzing, avoid any sense of worry, and ensure that the Celtics would spend the half thinking that tonight wasn't their night. Just as many games in baseball are won in the middle innings, before you get to a closer, so too was this game won when the Celtics were unable to cut the lead down and make things uncomfortable for the home team.

Special points as well to James, who shook off the continued bad shooting with 8 assists, 4 blocks and 3 steals, among them a breathtaking block of Rondo. That play, which ended with a West 3, was more or less the game in microcosm... and Game 4, and the Celtics' last chance at going into the third round with a shot at the should be resting Pistons, is Monday.