Further evidence of skills

Any knucklehead could tell you that this is how basketball should be played: 8 players in double figures. All 12 players scored. 48 rebounds spread between 11 players. Scot Pollard had 4 offensive rebounds in 5 minutes.

And on defense: 12 steals spread between 7 players. 26 assists spread between 9 players.

Ok, so the free thrown percentage was still bad, 71%. But the field goals sparkled at 49.4% (54% from 3-point land - apparently those are higher percentage shots.) And Sasha Pavlovic played the role of Lebron pretty convincingly.

What does this mean? It could have just been one of those nights when the 3s were dropping so consistently that the Cavs couldn't lose. But there's clearly more to it. Most critically, there was passing. The Cavs generally don't move the ball a lot on offense because every play is designed either to go straight to Lebron (say, 70% of the time), risky passes be damned, or through Lebron (maybe 20% of the time), in which case the ideal outcome is for him to exploit a hole in the defense and feed the ball inside. The three pointer tends to be an out when the defense is unyielding, rather than a product of design, except late in the game when there's a significant point disparity or when Lebron or Donyell Marshall feel the need to respond to a three at the other end.

Now, I don't know if Pavlovich is always good for shooting as well as he did last night. But even excluding him, there are a lot of Cavs with range, including big men. Gooden, Ilgauskas, Hughes, Gibson, with Marshall and Wesley to a lesser degree off the bench - at the very least, Mike Brown should give the first four the green light to shoot whenever they have a look. This would introduce a radical element of surprise into the Cavs offense. Certainly Lebron would still get to take a lot of shots, but if the idea were to move the ball around democratically and keep the defense shuffling, rather than allowing it to converge on James, you'd see an offensive juggernaut rather than a chariot led by one lonely, noble charioteer.