At Least It Was Close...

Well I feel kind of stupid. After I praised Daniel Gibson, he has an awful game with 1-10 shooting and 2 points. Still, 1-10 was what Larry Hughes put up in the first two games and Tony Parker wasn't as dominant tonight, so Gibson was still an improvement. And I stand by that playing a gimpy Hughes made no sense.

The guy who should feel really stupid after the Spurs edged the Cavaliers 75-72 is Anderson Varejao. That missed layup with 13 seconds left pretty much sealed the deal. LeBron did well to pass it off as he had no place to go, but Varejao had no business putting the ball on the floor. He should have passed it off and gotten the ball back to James instead of attempting a wild, awkward layup that had no real chance.

Thinking about it now, there may not be a more uncoordinated, raw player who puts the ball on the floor as much as Varejao does. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of his. I like his athleticism, his hustle, and of course his Sideshow Bob hair. But he has no business dribbling and driving as much as he does. He is in there to play defense, get offensive rebounds, and set picks. That's it. He scores most of his points off of put-backs and open layups and dunks, mostly off feeds from LeBron. And yet he shot below 50% on the season. Not what you want from that kind of player. In contrast, the Sixers' Samuel Dalembert, who I'd say is equally raw, shot 54% this year.

And yet, I can't entirely blame Varejao. I hate to heap blame onto one guy, but shouldn't Mike Brown be on top of this? Varejao's offensive adventures are nothing new, I saw them in every Cavs game I watched this year. Why doesn't Brown sit Varejao down and tell him he can't do that? What's Portuguese for "No" ? I almost want to give the guy a break because he's a solid player who just made one bad play, but he went to the basket almost instinctively. (Actually, it looked like he wanted to pull up and shoot the jumper for a split-second. Good thing he came to his senses and...oh wait.) If he was kept from making those moves in the regular season, he wouldn't have felt it was acceptable to haplessly drive to the basket tonight, instead of passing it off and getting it back to LeBron.

The one thing I will say for Brown is that he handled the end of the game reasonably well. He went for the quick two points with ten seconds left, instead of jacking a three. While I didn't like the last shot of the game, that looked like it was more LeBron's doing than it was Brown's play-calling. Of course, with five seconds left, it wouldn't have killed the Cavs to run some sort of play instead of inbounding to LeBron and having immediately launch a 26-footer. Maybe there wasn't much of a choice with the Spurs prepared to foul, but they could have worked a little harder to get him a clean look, or at least a closer look.

Of course, the real reason Cleveland lost is the poor outside shooting. LeBron had a solid game with 25 points, 8 rebounds, and 7 assists, but his teammates went 3-14 from downtown. And a lot of these were open looks. He should have had at least 10 assists, if only he had competent teammates. Maybe that will change next year with improvement from Gibson and Pavlovic and the healthy return of Hughes, plus a free agent signing and maybe a draft pick (which they would have to trade for, they've got no picks this year otherwise). I would say that the Cavs will likely make a trade, but I'm not sure who they could give up and expect to get anything of value in return. Maybe Drew Gooden or Varejao. As good as LeBron is, Danny Ferry is going to have his work cut out for him if he wants the Cavs to make a return trip to the Finals next year.

All that said, give it up for the Spurs. They may not be flashy, but they know how to win and I think the dynasty talk is somewhat legitimate. I'll get into that in a later column, after the Spurs finish the job.