...lest one of their Spanish-Inquisition-esque freak injuries latch onto him. It's no secret he's been a little bit injury-prone over the past few seasons.
If he stays healthy and the Cavs learn to shoot some freaking free throws, they will be a force. They played fairly ugly, shot 15-30 from the charity stripe, and still managed to beat a tough, tough Washington team.
James had a ho-hum 26/10/5 night when he really didn't shoot the ball well, only got to the free-throw line 6 times, and missed 4 of those 6 shots. The real story of the game was Hughes, who had 27 points and SHUT DOWN Gilbert Arenas. Arenas didn't even SCORE until late in the third quarter.
Washington is a tough team that will be there in the playoffs if they get better on defense. They have plenty of offensive weapons, which makes the Cavs' ugly win that much more impressive.
As much as LeBron may be the best player in the league, the Cavs will only go as far as a healthy Larry Hughes will take them. As well as they played in the playoffs last spring, Hughes is by far the second best player on the team, and they missed him. He brings the ability to score opposite James, which will be lethal as teams double LeBron and the Cavs pick up more of this motion offense. James is going to get doubled anytime he goes to the basket, and their new offense is designed to move people around and get them open cutting to the basket. James is a top-5 passer in the NBA, and the Cavs need a proven scorer to be making those cuts when he gets doubled, because he will ALWAYS find the open man.
Hughes also brings the ability to shut down the other team's primary small scorer, which is something the Cavs didn't have last year and sorely missed against Washington in the playoffs. If the Hughes from last night was in that series, it would have been a sweep because he was in Arenas's head last night.
All of this said, they need to play better than they did last night to be a potential Eastern Conference Championship team. Their new "motion" offense looked forced and rickety at times, especially in the first quarter when they passed the ball to the Wizards more often than they did to their own team. It's going to take time to get all of the nuances of the offense down, but they certainly have the passers to make it work with James and Hughes out top, and Big Z down low (an underrated passer for a big man). If only Ilgauskas could play some defense and actually score....
Their early schedule sets up for them to get off to a nice start, though. They'll probably lose tomorrow night at San Antonio, but after that they have a road game against Charlotte and three consecutive home games against Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Boston. There's no reason this team shouldn't start out 5-1. [edit] I'm an idiot... apparently we play Chicago at home instead of Philadelphia... big difference. So, pencil the Cavs in for 5-1, but 4-2 may also be reality.
And yes, loyal reader(s), I know I've just jinxed them to miss the playoffs.
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