NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Cleveland knows the clock is ticking and they want to do something about it. The clock is the time it takes to get to next year when LeBron James becomes a free agent and the whole state of Ohio holds its breath while suitors come out of the woodwork with all kinds of enticing deals for LeBron.

Think about it. Why did Cleveland easily go after Shaq? There is some question as to whether he is a good fit, because the guy guarding Shaq never has to go more than 5 feet away from the basket, thus cutting off the LeBron drives to the hoops. Shaq is also late in his career and will have a hard time averaging over 25 minutes or 45 games.

Shaq will be key to LeBron's future in Cleveland

But Cleveland had to do it. They had to show LeBron they were trying and if it works, then LeBron would go to the finals and probably stay in Cleveland.

The Cavaliers also have some free agent money and although not a lot, it may be crucial to land a shooter or defender. Here are some possible inexpensive free agent options for Cleveland.

Matt Barnes, Suns — Another lanky wing who is a solid shooter and has the size the Cavs want. His defense is a question, but he has the tools. Excellent spot-up shooter and good in transition going to the rim.

Anthony Parker, Raptors — The Raptors love him and may not let him walk, but they have cap space and other needs. It is well known the Cavs attempted to sign him when he came over from the Euroleague three years ago, and the tall, smooth shooter is very much still on their radar.

Dahntay Jones, Nuggets — Unheralded player with stats that won’t impress many, but has worked to establish himself as a strong outside defender with good size. Was an overlooked key in the Nuggets’ success last season.

Desmond Mason, Thunder — Limited offensively and coming off an injury but also one of the better wing defenders in the league and fits the Cavs’ character requirements. Won’t be the Cavs’ first choice, but they certainly will have him on their list.
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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

It was destiny waiting to happen and the dream matchup of the decade. It was to be the ever popular super talented LeBron James against the Killer of other team’s chances Kobe Bryant. Hey, David Stern had it all in the bag. It had the makings of one of the highest rated NBA Finals of all time.

Now we have a LeBron that won’t even speak to the media.

“We are not going to fine LeBron for that,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank told 1050 ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand. “We haven’t had any issues with him before at all.”

If James and the Cavs were still alive in the playoffs, James would have received a warning.

James also did not shake hands with Olympic teammate Dwight Howard or congratulate any Orlando players as he left the floor. On Sunday, he said he sent an e-mail to Howard following Saturday’s game.

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Next time you have to be sure to check out the records these teams have against each other. It matters. Cleveland did not do so well against Orlando or L.A.

The Cavs were a combined 3-8 this season against the Los Angeles Lakers and the Orlando Magic and both figure to be very strong again next year. In the annual season wrap session with the media Monday, Ferry said that will be a driving force as they examine their options this summer.

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There was just no way Orlando was going to the finals and wouldn’t it now be wild if they won it all? After coming back against Boston, they had sharpened their games to a high point and are now on a mighty roll.

Even LeBron James could not slow down Dwight Howard

The Cav’s never did have an answer for Dwight Howard and that led to no answer for the 3 point shooting for Orlando.
The impossible may happen, but it will have to happen without LeBron.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Think of Yao and LeBron on the court together for the rest of their careers and your first thought is why would LeBron want to sign with Houston?

But that is not the source of this discussion. The source is from Hoopsworld reporting that a Chinese group is interested in investing in the Cavaliers.

Not when the New World Development Company, representing a group of Chinese investors, is set to buy a 15 percent ownership interest in the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Hong Kong-based group is led by Kenny Huang, a Chinese-born investor who has in the past brokered marketing deals with the Houston Rockets
and New York Yankees.

On the surface, it may be merely the next most logical step in the growing relationship between the NBA and China, where basketball is wildly popular.
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Now that would mean they would be very interested in prying Yao Ming from the Rockets and getting him paired up with LeBron in Cleveland.

Yao Ming is holding his breath for a title

Would it be a good fit? Maybe not, because Yao would have to move away from the basket to open up driving lanes for LeBron and that just does not make sense to me. But marketingwise it is a no brainer. It would create tremendous Chinese interest and don’t think for a minute that the NBA would not love that.

The NBA plans for world domination!
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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Hey, this Dwight Howard guy is pretty darn good. Well, we all know that is an underestimation for the ages. Howard has been dominant.

Oh, yes, LeBron has been LeBron and is still clearly the greatest player this side of Kobe Bryant, but Howard has turned his team into winners and carried them on his back. When he becomes unstoppable underneath, then the Orlando shooters like Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alston, and Michael Pietrus become great 3 point shooters.

Howard wants a shot at the Lakers

Vinnie Johnson once remarked after making a dozen threes in a row in warm-ups, “But can you make them in a game with a hand in your face?” Well, when you are sending 2 or 3 guys down low to stop Howard, there are no hands in your face!

Everyone is still looking to LeBron to somehow pull this one out, but the Magic are frustrated with how much the public pays attention to only LeBron. They want respect and they want a shot at the NBA Title.

So the Cavs laid off Howard to start Tuesday, and he made them pay, scoring 11 points in the first six minutes. They went back to double-teaming him for much of the next three quarters, and Howard scored just six more points before the start of overtime. Still, all the attention he drew freed the Magic shooters, most notably Rafer Alston (notes) and Michael Pietrus (notes), who combined to make 11 3-pointers.

On one comical possession, Cavs guard Mo Williams turned his back on Alston to follow Courtney Lee (notes). With no other Cav within five feet of him, Alston buried yet another 3-pointer.

“We need one stop,” James said. “We haven’t got one stop to win a ballgame yet.”

James has realized he can’t beat Howard and these Magic alone. He received more support on Tuesday than he did in Game 3, but it still wasn’t enough. Williams made just two shots after halftime, falling flat, so far, on his “guarantee” that the Cavs would win the series.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

No sooner do you put out a post on how great LeBron is and how much of a battle he is in with Kobe Bryant to be the best player and along come the Magic and make LeBron all human again.

News flash, LeBron is not the Terminator.

Movie news Terminator Salvation: Your intrepid author got the chance to see this movie this past weekend and the Terminators did not fare any better than LeBron did in game three. Like LeBron, the Terminators missed their free throws late in the game and the result was a less than satisfying movie, in spite of Moon Bloodgood playing the hot hot Blair Williams.

LeBron James from Terminator to Human

The Magic came to play and the referees came to whistle. They weren’t just whistling Dixie, they were whistling fouls and there were over 80 of them.

Orlando shot 51 free throws, hitting 39. Cleveland attempted 35, making 26.

James shot 24 free throws, making 18. Dwight Howard (24 points and nine rebounds) made 14-of-19 free throws — including big ones down the stretch — before fouling out and Hedo Turkoglu hit 11-of-12.

Howard, a career 59 percent free-throw shooter, said he was singing a song in his head to relieve the pressure at the line.

” I didn’t think about it too much. I just tried to shoot,” Howard said. “I heard a song playing at halftime. I just kept thinking about dancing. If my free throws are going in, I might have to keep up that routine.”
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Late in the game with Orlando protecting the lead, James just could not make the plays to get Cleveland back in the game. One time he was Read more

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

It is a great time in the NBA when legends are being born and young players are maturing into great players. As an example, the battle of player supremacy is going on between LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.

It does not matter which side of this debate you take or even if you do not take a side at all, because this is just great theatre in the NBA.

Side note on theatre: watched Night at the Museum II with Ben Stiller and Amy Adams (not to mention the wife and kids). It was a great movie well worth the millions of dollars to just purchase tickets, pop, and popcorn. It managed to keep all of the characters from the original movie and introduce some new ones, most notably Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart.

Hey, we can’t always be watching the NBA playoffs, you know.

LeBron James makes gamewinner in game 2

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. One game after LeBron won the game for the Cavaliers at the end, Kobe Bryant strikes back.

This is a sport of superstars and the NBA has been waiting a long, long time for two such transcendent stars to fortify its Final Four. They’re fighting for an NBA championship, yes, but Bryant’s ferocity won’t allow him to let go of the title as the game’s best closer. Bryant still makes the biggest plays, the biggest shots, when it matters most.

So, Bryant made a trip to Denver for Game 3 of the West finals and buried the Nuggets with 41 points, with a rebel’s resolve. With Denver’s J.R. Smith(notes) draping him, Bryant swished a 3-pointer with 69 seconds left. With his legs wobbly, with nearly 20,000 people in the Pepsi Center cursing his name, Bryant delivered four free throws in the final 22 seconds of the 103-97 victory.

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So if you are at the movies with the family, like me, you can almost rush home and just watch the end of the fourth quarter to see the most heroic moments. But it is still better to see the whole game.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Ok, pull it together; this game did make sense, only you were in denial. Well, same here, denial, denial. You have to look at the facts of the recent past and the facts say that Orlando is 9 - 3 against the Cav’s in their last 12 meetings.

But it was Cleveland’s home court. Surely, LeBron is going to turn it on, right? Yes and Yes.

LeBron was magnificent as usual with 49 points, but it just was not enough.

Dwight Howard just keeps getting better and better

On the other hand, Dwight Howard was definitely pumped up, maybe too much. He not only had a monster game, but opened with a monster dunk and destroyed the 24 second clock.

Howard delayed the game — and then he derailed the Cavs. He followed rookie Courtney Lee’s miss, dunking the ball hard for the Magic’s first basket. Too hard. His dunk collapsed the 24-second clock affixed atop the basket backboard one minute into the game, sending it falling against the support beam.

It didn’t tumble to the court, but the clock stopped working, causing a nine-minute delay.

After Cavs personnel surveyed the damage, they brought in two 24-second clocks out of storage that were placed on the floor. All NBA teams have spare shot-clocks in case of malfunctions. (The clock was repaired for the second half of play.)

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The Magic now have home court advantage, complements of a last second 3 pointer by Rashard Lewis and 30 points and 13 rebounds from Dwight Howard. The Magic will still play the next game in Cleveland, but are full of confidence and have home court advantage.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Jerry West just happened to mention that LeBron James has moved ahead of Kobe Bryant in the race for best imitation of Michael Jordan on an NBA court. How could he say that?

Kobe denies even hearing it, but went out and put up 40 on the Denver Nuggets in game 1 of the Western Conference finals in the forum in Los Angeles.

Kobe Bryant, now known as #2

Kobe is competitive, extremely, and as bad of grammar as that sentence is, it is ever so true. It had to hurt to hear a former Laker like Jerry West, and someone that Kobe looks up to, mention that Kobe has dropped to number two in the world.

Sorry, Nuggets, you will have to pay the price. Here is the actual quote from Jerry West.

“I look at Cleveland [and] say to myself, ‘How many games could they win without LeBron James?’ ” West said. “That’s how great he is. He has a chance to be arguably the greatest player ever to play the game. … Michael Jordan was the best defensive player in the league, but he was also the best offensive player. It wasn’t a one-year fluke; he proved it over time. LeBron James will do the same type of things because he’s getting better. He’s a much more effective shooter. When he’s making his shots from the outside, you can’t play him. He’s just too big, too strong, too quick. And he has incredible body control. But more than that, he’s a great teammate. You can see his teammates love him.”

And then, the money quote.

“If I had to have somebody make a last-second shot, it would be Kobe Bryant,” West said. “But even though it’s hard for me to be objective, because I brought Kobe to Los Angeles, I do think LeBron has surpassed Kobe as a player.”

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Chad Ford writes for the ESPN insider and has some definite opinions on basketball.

On Denver vs. the Lakers:

Damon (Socorro, NM): At this point, are the Lakers worrying about Denver?

Chad Ford: They should be. Denver has been great. Chauncey is showing that he was really the heart of the Pistons all of those years and they have a physical front line. They don’t have the depth that the Lakers have, but I think the Nuggets will really, really push them. I’ve been really, really impressed.

Any Piston fan would tell you that Chauncey was an important piece of the puzzle, but as the Pistons aged, Chauncey could no longer carry them. He is great at pulling the team together, but he is not a Kobe or LeBron, where he is the team.

Chauncey Billups is leading Denver to glory

On LeBron James… Read more

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

It goes without saying that LeBron James cannot be stopped by the Hawks and the series could turn into a sweep.

James leads everyone in the postseason with a 33.7 points-per-game average. He is averaging 36 points per game in this series against the Hawks.

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That is right. 36 points per game. Ouch!

LeBron James unstoppable

The game is 40 - 38 Cavaliers at halftime and LeBron only has 12. Since when has 12 been an ‘only’ at halftime?

Remember when LeBron came into the league and most observers said he was great, but can’t really shoot the outside ball? Well, in the last game the Hawks were switching all over the court on defense and every time someone shorter than LeBron was guarding him, he just put it up and it went in. What happened to can’t shoot the outside shot?

The reason LeBron James is shooting the ball better from the outside than he did several years ago comes down to four-letter word … work. He really does practice his shooting. A few hours before the game, he will take 30 shots from six different spots on the court — and four spots in between. Then he takes another 40 shots or more near the basket, practicing short hook shots. He mixes in free throws. Assistant Chris Jent puts him through the paces.

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