Pieces of the Puzzle Coming Together

Hey, Cavs fans! It’s AC – what’s happening?

Slowly but surely, all the pieces are coming back together. This week, it was Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ turn to come back to the fold after he missed seven games with the bad back.

As far as the team is concerned, the Cavaliers are constructed like a unit – like my team was back in the day. We had ten deep, and each guy played his role. This team is built that way, especially their roles on the defensive end. So what Z’s return does is put everything back in order – because you start in the middle and work your way out. The frontline now fits together.

The right order of things is coming back at the right time. Sasha’s back. Boobie’s coming back. Now you have your outside game, your inside game. And the team is whole again.

No player on the team is affected as much by Z coming back as Ben Wallace. They complement one another.

When Ben needs height, Z is there to back him up. When Z needs quickness, Ben’s there to back him up. That really is a good complement between the two. And it’s been something this team has been missing for some time. Now, you can pretty much cover any situation down low.

Z allows Ben to play ‘off the center.’ And when other teams double Ilgauskas – because you have to be careful with Z – that means Ben is working with one man. And he’s a tough guy to handle by himself. What I look for in him, ideally, is double-figure rebounds and eight points. But really, it’s all the intangibles that he brings – steals and blocked shots off the ball – that will complete the entire package.

Now Boobie is coming back and we’ll have our outside game complete. Everything is falling into place. And right now, the best thing is we’re doing it under the radar. Everyone’s talking about Boston and Detroit, and I think both of those teams know that if we get healthy, they’re going to have to deal with us.

The national media might not be talking about us, but every time you hear Doc Rivers, he talks about having to deal with Cleveland. And after what happened to the Pistons last year – they know what the deal is.

We face Detroit three more times the rest of the season, including Wednesday’s game in Cleveland. We’re going to bring a better inside game when we face Detroit now. We have better balance. In other words, you can take Z and let him do what he likes to do – facing the basket – and let Ben patrol under the basket. That’s big when you play the Pistons.

Right now, of all the new guys that come over in the big trade, Wally seems to be struggling the most.

He just has to get used to where his shots are coming from. As a shooter, you always feel comfortable when you know where your shots are coming from. And you can tell, he’s not quite there yet – he’s kind of running all over the place. Wally’s not making his move and – boom! – flowing right into the shot. He’s just not quite familiar with the offense yet and he’s pressing as far as making shots.

And I think the problem is coming in his upper body. The couple of shots that he made on Sunday night, you could see that he had good flex in his knees and he went up through his shoulders. He can sometimes get in the habit of shooting flat-footed. But all that comes with getting familiar with the surroundings and getting familiar with the plays. And understanding how Delonte or Boobie or LeBron delivers the ball.

When the playoffs roll around, the Cavaliers will have one of the deepest teams in the East – if not the deepest.

Of course, the Pistons are deep, too. They’re smaller than we are, but they’re deep because their rookies are coming through for them as well as guys like Maxiell and Jarvis Hayes. The beauty of their team is – and they’re such a veteran team – is that you never know who the hot man is going to be. But they will find him and they don’t care if he’s an All-Star or the last guy on the bench.
It doesn’t matter because they play winning team basketball.

I think we’re just as strong as the Pistons and I think we’re actually deeper than the Celtics. I think we’re as strong as any team in the East – we’re just not a seasoned team yet. But I don’t mind flying under the radar.

Unless something drastic happens, we should be locked into the fourth-seed with 15 games to play. Once your spot is locked up and you know it’s locked up, you have to continue to go hard because we’re trying to mesh guys into our system. And nobody wants to go into the playoffs on a losing note.

The beauty of our situation is we have to keep going because we have to get guys healthy and we have to see what we’ve got when we are healthy. And obviously, the rotation is going to change one more time when Boobie comes back.

There’s a lot of things we have to discover about this team between now and the end of the regular season.