what the hell is going on in cleveland?

I know that this isn't exactly the first of what is about to become a raging flood of "What's wrong with the LeBrons?" but I figured I would give it a shot anyways. Keep in mind that the term "struggling" is relative: they just lost a 3 game win streak by one point to a solid Bulls team featuring the best second-year guard of a stacked draft class after 'Bron was debatably fouled going to the bucket on the last play of the game. Sure, it's football out there and he really should have finished stronger than that over Joakim freaking Noah, but whatever, they lost.

What we're seeing with the Cavs is indicative of the direction of the league as a whole: they're being royally screwed by Mike Brown's insistence on playing two-and-a-half non-shooters on the floor together for most of the game. Varejao is a nice defensive player, Big Z needs some burn and can step out to around 17 feet without losing *too* much accuracy, Shaq is Shaq, and LeBron is the greatest of all time (and should always be on the court except when he needs to step out into Earth's yellow sun to recharge his energy), but playing three of them together is an open letter imploring the defense to pack three guys into the paint and dare Mo Williams to take the game over. Why is this problematic?

So far the Cavs have seen their FG% (.468 to .436) and PPG (100.3 to 93.5) drop off a cliff while seemingly doing nothing but improve their team in the offseason (Moon, Parker, and Shaq) and coming off a Coach of the Year season for Mike Brown. Although their defense has improved by about two points per game, this is a far cry from the Cavs team last year that beat opponents so viciously that LeBron could routinely sit out the fourth quarter of games and basically act like black Scalabrine. Anecdotally the answer seems pretty obvious: Shaq needs to go.

Unlike his first season in Miami, when the Big Fella opened driving lanes for Wade and flew around the basket like a man possessed (remember that he garnered serious MVP consideration at the time because he was trying so hard to stick it to Kobe and the Lakers for trading him and had gotten off his fat ass and actually conditioned during the offseason--does this come off as bitter?), he's been the cheeseburger in the Cavs' arteries so far this season. Why? Well, to begin with in Miami he played in the frontcourt alongside Udonis Haslem (everyone forgets this now but the Wade/Salvatore's superhuman effort in the '06 finals would have gone for shit if Haslem wasn't making Dirk pay every time he cheated onto Wade or Shaq), who defenses had to at least respect out to the midrange, and who had the athleticism to guard quicker 4s. Debatably: Z has the same range as Udonis but his natural position is closer to the basket, and if you've seen anything this season, you've seen how ridiculous and awful the Ilgauskas-Shaq pairing has been this season.

(Note to the league: pairing two immobile big men NO LONGER WORKS. There's a reason the Knicks were so execrable with Curry and Randolph on the court, and why Portland's ridiculous Oden/Pryzbilla experiment in the playoffs last year culminated in a first round exit.)

So: a whole lot of complaining so far. Here's what needs to get done: STOP TRYING TO LIVE IN THE 90s, MIKE. I know that Mike Brown just lost his offensive coordinator to a division rival, and grew as a coach in the Spurs system when they were destroying the league behind the twin towers of Robinson and Duncan, but show some freaking imagination, please. I'm 95% sure Mike Brown just saw Clueless and wants to talk about "that Alicia Silverstone" with the training staff. Brown should slide LeBron up to the 4, insert Moon into the starting lineup over Varejao, play Shaq and Z in alternating minutes, and insert Varejao when they're really desperate for some D/rebounding/insane Sideshow Bob-style flopping, and basically dare every other team in the league to cover LeBron with their 4. How many 4s can handle his quickness and athleticism? For my money the list starts and stops with KG two years ago, and maybe Odom or Chuck Hayes can funnel him into the center if he's feeling sprightly.

This has two benefits. First: it's going to make the opponent either decide to let LeBron shred them offensively and hope they can make some of it up by punishing him down low (unlikely since he's bigger than half the 4s in the league, and it's rarer and rarer that teams play a back-to-the-basket scorer at that position) or they throw up their hands and play the matchups by inserting two smaller forwards into the game. At this point, the Cavs would rejoice because it means that Shaq and LeBron can now totally control the glass AND because now the other team doesn't have two huge bodies to throw onto Shaq down low. Want to make the Big Fella happy? Let him play one on one the whole game while he's surrounded with shooters and a guard in a linebacker's body. That's the approach Phoenix took last season when Gentry took over, and that resulted in one of the greatest offenses of all time.

Now I'm betting the Cavs snap out of their relative funk in time to start putting together some wins now that Delonte's back (another "what's wrong with the Cavs?" theory is that Delonte handled much of the offense while Mo and Bron were on the bench and they missed his absence more than many realized), but I think that if they even want to sniff last season's ascendancy they're going to have to take some semi-radical steps towards the King's positional redefinition. Shit, if it worked for me in NBA 2k9, it's GOTTA work in real life.