CLEVELAND — The Cavaliers went into Thursday night with a four-game lead over Washington, Toronto and Philadelphia, so LeBron James and Co. are almost a lock to earn the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
That means the Cavaliers will have home-court advantage in the first round of the postseason, where they will almost certainly meet one of the aforementioned three teams.
“The first thing is to try to continue to get better,” Cleveland coach Mike Brown said prior to a game against the Chicago Bulls at Quicken Loans Arena. “The reality of it is, we’d rather have home-court advantage than go on the road.
“We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We have to keep taking care of business. … If we take care of our business the right way, we’ll get (the No. 4 seed), but it’s not really a big focus.”
The Cavaliers have played Washington in the first round each of the last two seasons, winning in six hard-fought games in 2006 and sweeping the depleted Wizards in 2007.
All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas has returned to action for Washington, but James is not concerned about trying to avoid the Wizards in the first round.
“Any time you can add a perennial All-Star to your roster this late in the season, it’s got to help,” James said. “We played them (in the playoffs) with Gilbert and we played them without Gilbert. It doesn’t matter.”

Big Ben’s back

Cavaliers power forward Ben Wallace, held out of the previous two games by Brown due to recurring back spasms, was back in the starting lineup against the Bulls.
• Lance Allred’s second 10-day contract expired after the game, but the Cavaliers will sign him for the rest of the season today. Allred is the first legally deaf player to play in the NBA.
• Sasha Pavlovic entered Thursday having not played at all in two games since losing his starting shooting guard spot to Devin Brown. Damon Jones played four minutes in those two games, but only because Daniel Gibson aggravated an ankle injury.
“I’ve been fighting to figure out a rotation,” Mike Brown said. “I’m to the point where I’m going to go with (the one the team is using now).”

Trading places

The Bulls entered Thursday with a 7-13 record since acquiring Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Shannon Brown and Cedric Simmons from the Cavaliers.
Gooden, who is currently out with a lower abdominal strain, is averaging 14.0 points and 9.3 rebounds with Chicago, while Hughes is averaging 12.8 points on .373 shooting, 3.3 rebounds and 3.3 assists. Shannon Brown entered Thursday having played just 16 minutes in four games and Simmons had played just 10 minutes in four games.
The Cavaliers, meanwhile, entered Thursday with an 11-9 mark since acquiring former Bulls Wallace and Joe Smith and adding Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak from Seattle.

Schedule change

Cleveland’s April 13 game against Miami has been changed from a 1 p.m. tipoff to 6 p.m. It will no longer be televised by ABC.

Look back

Seven Cleveland players scored in double figures against the Bobcats. The last time the Cavaliers did that was April 14, 2007 vs. Atlanta.
Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net. 

---

Print this story
Report an inappropriate comment

---

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.

Need help? Email Us.

---