Can The Cavs Finally Jam?

Price, whom some call the best point guard in the game, explains, "We don't have a Michael Jordan or Charles Barkley to carry us. We have very good basketball players. But we need them all to win." Certainly they need Daugherty and Price to win. Just as Daugherty's absence explained the mediocrity of 1989-90, Price's year off with a knee injury explains the Cavs' sub-.500 season of '90-91. "Every team has guys that get injured," Price says. "We have key guys that get injured."

Says Daugherty, "We play pretty well together, but only when we're together. If Mark, the guy who handles the ball, is not healthy, we can be in trouble." In the last 3½ seasons, through last Sunday, Cleveland has been 140-76 with Price, 31-59 without him.

Price, like Daugherty, is another reluctant star. He was a second-round draft pick from Georgia Tech, admired for his shooting but, because of his size and complexion, consigned by most scouts to that awful category of one-dimensional guards. "I'm not the fastest guy," he says still, "but I kept up with all those guys in the ACC." But if Cleveland didn't like him enough to take him with their first-round pick, well, he wasn't so hot for Cleveland, either. "I said there were two places I wouldn't play—Cleveland and New York. I said it out of ignorance. When my pick was traded to Cleveland [from the Dallas Mavericks], I actually had to look it up in an encyclopedia."

In fact, until the NBA puts more teams in the Bible Belt, he probably is as good a fit in Cleveland as anywhere. It's not the gospel-music capital of the world—not like his hometown of Enid, Okla.—but Price has managed to find some fellows at his church in Cleveland to help him record an album of Christian music. "It's another way to share my faith," says the choirboy with the choirboy looks.

Until this season Price's fan club has been cultish. Although awhile back New York Knick coach Pat Riley rated him the top point guard in the league, and Bull coach Phil Jackson tabbed him his favorite, it wasn't until this year's All-Star Weekend that Price achieved national acclaim: Annually one of the best three-point shooters in the NBA, he finally cemented his reputation as a long-range bomber by winning the three-point contest. "That's the most attention I've had in all this time." says the seven-year veteran. "And it had to come from a gimmick." But to prove he wasn't just a carnival act, the next day Price set an All-Star Game record by canning six more three-pointers. Nowadays when the kids come up to him in the lobby to ask for autographs, as they did in Minneapolis last week, they'll ask, "Were you nervous in the three-point contest, Mr. Price?" Mr. Price says no.

This is the kind of homespun wholesomeness that Wilkins was plunged into. Wilkins grew up in Atlanta and attended colleges in Mississippi and Tennessee. So maybe he should be able to talk about dirt tracks or croon a gospel medley. "Yeah," he cautions, "but seven years in New York, man." He dismisses his Southern heritage just like that. "You look at these guys. Am I totally different or what?"

Well, let's look at some more Cavaliers. Nance, a South Carolina native who still has as much spring in his long legs as he did in his rookie season with the Phoenix Suns, 12 years ago, is another car nut. He has spent about $120,000 to get a blue 1968 Camaro up to speed for the Pro-Modified circuit, but the catch is, he can't drive it because his Cav contract forbids him to do so. Hence, the car's name: Catch 22. When the laconic Nance talks, you get the feeling he would rather put an engine together than take a defense apart. Still, he has found the enthusiasm to average 17 points and nine rebounds a game this year for the Cavs and to lead them in blocked shots (2.7). This season, just after his 34th birthday, he made the All-Star team for the third time in his career. "We're just laid-back guys," Nance says. "Not the kind that wear pretty, bright suits."

Let's look at one more Cav—Williams, sixth man supreme. Hot Rod, unfortunately, is not into cars as much as his nickname (a holdover from childhood) suggests. His hero is not Richard Petty but Norm Abram, the second-banana carpenter on This Old House. Williams is into cabinetry, woodworking and designing and building houses. And what he most likes to do is take a set of blueprints (he even carries his architect's renderings on the road) and make model houses. He uses everything from Popsicle sticks to Styrofoam, which he prefers, for construction. It's more than a hobby; his models were used for a house he built for his mother and for one he had built for himself.

Now when he's at home he spends as many as four hours a day building a subdivision out of Styrofoam. "it's got low-cost housing, little parks...," he says. It's not at all surprising that Hot Rod does not construct skyscrapers. In fact, the idea of tiny bright lights puzzles him. "We're small-town guys," he says.

So, who would live in his Styrofoam city? Wilkins?