MVN - Most Valuable Network

Locked Up: Cavs Level Series at 2-2

Are you really surprised that this series is following the same path as each of the last two playoff matchups with Detroit?

In this knee-jerk NBA, the Cavs were left for dead after absorbing a 16-point beating at Boston on Thursday night. Down 0-2, they were left for dead. Heck, it got so nasty that I, of all people, began writing “LeBron is leaving” articles.

Thank goodness there’s only a day between each of these games in this series, or else God knows what else I’m capable of.

But Game 4…Game 4 was real, as the Cavs won, 88-77, to send it back to Boston tied at two games apiece.

Perimeter shooting. Not as ill as the 52.6 percent on Saturday night, but still solid: six-for-17 from downtown for a respectable 35.3 percent. Daniel Gibson got back into the swing of things, going two-for-four from beyond the arc and five-for-nine from the floor to finish with 14 points to go along with four assists and six rebounds. Wally Szczerbiak kept his hot hand, going two-for-four from three-point range and six-for-11 from the field to match Boobie’s 14. And the fact that LeBron went two-for-five on 3s offset Delonte West following up a stellar Game 3 with an 0-for-4 three-point shooting night.

Boston, meanwhile, kept struggling on 3s. We pointed this out going into Game 4, and the Celtics’ perimeter shooting woes continued on Monday night. The C’s were three-for-14 from three-point range, dropping them to 15-for-58 (25.9 percent) for the series. It looked for a while there in the third quarter that Ray Allen had found his stroke back, but Allen finished just four-for-10 from the floor and didn’t make much noise after the third period in finishing with 15 points.

Only LeBron James can make up for bad shooting nights. His shooting woes continued at seven-for-20 (35 percent) shooting, but LB dropped 13 dimes on the Celtics, including an absolutely sick nasty no-look drop to Joe Smith in the lane that was ridiculously amusing. He continued to pack the stat sheet elsewhere with six boards, three steals, and two blocks. And he again played a large role in helping the Cavs absolutely hound Paul Pierce, who suffered through yet another awful night of six-for-17 shooting, 0-for-3 from downtown, and just two trips to the charity stripe to get his 13 points.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention LeBron’s posterization of a helpless Kevin Garnett to put the exclamation point on this one, as you can see if you fast forward to the 00:46 mark of this video.

And that solid defensive gameplan from Game 3? It carried over to Game 4, as the Celtics were held to just 38.6 percent shooting from the floor.

The key, however, was Anderson Varejao, who first made a name for himself nationally in that second-round series with Detroit two years ago. We all knew Varejao as being the defensive energizer ever since he first came to the Cavs way back in 2004, but Kevin Garnett got a mouthful of Anderson on Monday night. KG got 15 points on six-for-13 shooting, but he only came up with two in the second half as the Cavs defense was able to completely stuff and rattle Boston’s bewildered offense.

Whenever I think of Anderson Varejao now, the first thing that comes to mind (besides the amusing flops - I think the guy once flopped away from the ball to draw a technical foul) is this following excerpt from the Akron Beacon Journal’s Brian Windhorst from a blog entry in March of last year:

“I think Malik Rose was seconds away from hauling off and hitting Andy Varejao. He’d simply had enough of him and his feisty antics in the third quarter. He got his fifth foul and Isiah left him in, which apparently didn’t make him too happy, because after Varejao missed a free throw, Rose went over and slammed him. This accomplished two things: He didn’t have to play any more and he got a shot in on Varejao. So Jerome James came in for a minute, committed a turnover and got his own slam in at Andy…After the game, Mike Brown told me Andy gets on people’s nerves because he ‘breathes on them and his hair gets in their mouth.’ That’s pretty nasty, but true I believe.”

Yeah, that’s pretty sick, but it’s a big reason why Varejao has successfully gotten under Rasheed Wallace’s skin in each of the last two postseason. Now it’s Garnett’s turn, and if Anderson can keep up this “by whatever means necessary” routine for the remainder of the series, Cleveland’s defense is going to be a lot harder to solve.

And I know you saw that graphic on TNT near the end of the game about the Cavs having held opponents to under 90 points in these playoffs in eight out of 10 games. This Cavs D is no joke, people. I’m talking to you, Mike Brown detractors.

Talk about protecting the rock - just seven turnovers. That includes not having a single turnover in the final 17:51. The bad news is that the C’s got 15 points off of those seven turnovers while the Cavs managed just nine points off of eight Boston turnovers. LeBron had four of those seven turnovers, up from two in Game 3, but overall it was a very clean effort from the Cavs. They shot the ball fairly well, had a good gameplan, and did a great job protecting the basketball. We didn’t see that in either of the first two games in Boston, so the results based on those improvements shouldn’t be that surprising, no matter whose corner you’re in for this series.

Here’s another key stat for you: The team that has won the battle on the boards has won each of the first four games of this series. The Cavs held a 42-38 advantage Monday night with their rebounding-by-committee routine.

So the Celtics are now 0-5 on the road during the playoffs. Of course, that’s what all the media honks will focus on going into Game 5 on Wednesday night back at the Garden. But if this series is anything like the two Detroit series’ of postseasons past like we mentioned earlier, expect a different Cavs team to trot out on that parquet floor. The Cavs stunned the Pistons in Game 5 two years ago at the Palace to take a 3-2 series lead back to Cleveland.

And last year…last year. Lest we forget. How can we ever forget about LeBron James scoring the last 25 points for the Cleveland Cavaliers, 29 of their last 30, and 48 overall in an epic 109-107 double-overtime victory - the kind of moment in which you’ll always remember where you were and what you were doing for the rest of your life?

That was Game 5 last year. Game 5 this year is Wednesday night (8 p.m. Eastern, TNT).

Post-game video: LeBron James

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Anderson Varejao, Ray Allen, Delonte West, Wally Szczerbiak, Brian Windhorst, Malik Rose, Paul Pierce, Daniel Gibson, Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Mike Brown, Jerome James. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.