LeBron, Cavaliers find old habits hard to break in Eastern finals

Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy needled his players at halftime Wednesday in Cleveland, zinging them in the locker room as they trailed by 15 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, by snidely referring to them as "witnesses." Playing off the well-worn LeBron James marketing campaign ("We Are All Witnesses"), Van Gundy criticized his team's passive defense, as opposed to, you know, being active participants.

Which would make James' teammates in that one, what, exactly? Bystanders?

Hardly innocent ones, though, the way they stood and watched as the Magic erased Cleveland's lead and ended the Cavaliers' run of playoff invincibility. James responded by reverting to his throwback One-on-Five mode, circa 2007 postseason. And in what became the great Circle of Strife, the other Cavs responded to that with more standing and watching.

It was a formula for success on par with Henry Jekyll's or New Coke's. Important Cleveland starters such as Mo Williams and Delonte West -- 10-for-32 combined -- were back to zero, as in no impact, in their plus/minus ratings by the end of the night. Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas had a personal plus/minus in his individual matchup with Dwight Howard of minus-20. Then there was the bench, mustering all of five points (courtesy of Joe Smith) to the Magic subs' 25. Or to put that another way: Wally Szczerbiak, Daniel Gibson and Ben Wallace were outscored 4-0 by that one-man gang, Marcin Gortat

Now on most nights, and in Cleveland's two previous series this spring, a contribution of 57 points from the other Cavs added to an average game for James (28.4 ppg in 2008-09) would have been plenty. Their defensive average after the sweeps of Detroit and Atlanta was 78.1 points allowed. This one was out of whack, though, and could stay that way because of the pace at which Orlando plays and the bunches by which it scores. The most points allowed by Cleveland against the Pistons or the Hawks was 85; the Magic had that with 10 minutes to spare in Game 1.

And while the Cavs rightly blamed their defense -- Orlando shot 55 percent, scored 50 points in the paint and ran off 17 fast-break points -- their offense contributed to those breakdowns. All those shots Williams and West missed, their team's 3-of-13 struggles from the arc in the second half and the general flat-footedness at one end made it that much tougher for the Cavs to properly defend, or to even get set, at the other. Just as your defense becomes your offense in the playoffs, your shaky offense can become your shoddy defense.

"One of the things we have to do, we have to get the ball reversed," coach Mike Brown told reporters after practice Thursday. "We thought we were too stagnant through parts of the second half, and being stagnant allowed them to zone out and lock in very easily. So we got to get the ball moving from one side of the court to the other. We got to get bodies moving. We have to do a better job of falling into something."

They also have to follow when James leads. LeBron has been reliable in getting the others involved early in games, with the idea that one, two or more of them will ignite from the spark of a drive-and-kick or his pass threaded across court through arms and hands. It's what Kobe Bryant does, only without any who-says-I-can't-make-them-better defiance; James is like a bandleader giving his instrumentalists room to solo. But if they're simply not going to play, well, then it's blow, big man, blow in a one-horn town.

Backups always are at the mercy of their minutes, so Sasha Pavlovic is off the hook for the moment; he had a DNP-CD on Wednesday and has played five minutes total in the past three games. Whatever his defensive liabilities, though, Pavlovic does have some length to pester Magic shooters and he did score 11 points in 30 minutes combined in the first two games against Atlanta.

For those who did play off the bench Wednesday, though, minutes were not the problem.