INDEPENDENCE — Sasha Pavlovic missed all of training camp and didn’t sign until the eve of the season opener, then struggled to find his game once he arrived.
Anderson Varejao wasn’t under contract until Dec. 5, then missed time due to a sprained ankle.
LeBron James sprained a finger and had back spasms.
Pavlovic, Gibson and Delonte West, like Varejao, all suffered foot or ankle injuries, Pavlovic on two separate occasions.
Wally Szczerbiak missed a game to be with his wife while she gave birth.
Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Ben Wallace sat out with back spasms.
Assistant coach Hank Egan had a heart attack.
Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden, Donyell Marshall, Shannon Brown, Ira Newble and Cedric Simmons were part of a Feb. 21 trade with Seattle and Chicago that brought Wallace, Szczerbiak, West and Joe Smith to Cleveland.
The Cavaliers had to sign Billy Thomas and Kaniel Dickens out of the NBA Development League just to have the mandatory eight players in uniform for a Feb. 22 game against Washington.
Cleveland equaled the franchise record set in a tumultuous 1981-82 season — otherwise known as part of the Ted Stepien era — by having 23 players appear in at least one game. The starting lineup changed, the rotation changed and, 82 regular-season games later, both are still changing.
Throughout the season, a bad stretch was followed by a good one, a good stretch by a bad one. Every time it looked like the Cavaliers were putting things together, something happened and things started heading in the other direction.
That about sums up the 2007-08 regular season for the Cavaliers (45-37), who will host the Washington Wizards (43-39) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in Game 1 of a best-of-seven, first-round playoff series.
“That’s just the way the season goes,” said shooting guard Devin Brown, who has gone from coming off the bench to starting to coming off the bench to starting to coming off the bench. “Good teams don’t find excuses for anything. You’ve got to push all that aside. At the end of the day, you’re still fighting for one thing, and that’s to win a championship.”
Given their uneven play throughout the season, the Cavaliers are not one of the favorites to capture the title in 2008. For that matter, they’re not even a heavy favorite to defeat the Wizards, who have fallen to them in the first round each of the last two years.
After winning 50 games in each of the previous two regular seasons — not to mention gaining a favorable playoff spot last year, which led to series wins over injury-ravaged Washington and New Jersey in the first two rounds — the Cavaliers slipped to 45 victories in 2007-08.
Optimism, however, still prevails in the Cleveland locker room.
“I feel good about this team,” coach Mike Brown said. “If we have an understanding that we need to take this one day, one game at a time — we can’t get too high and we can’t get too low because we know we’re going to face adversity in the playoffs — if we can do that, we have as good a chance as anybody else.
“Last year (when the Cavaliers reached the NBA Finals), we were a team that was basically together for two years. This year, we’re a team that’s been together for 25 games or so. There’s a difference. If I sat here and said there wasn’t a difference, I’d be trying to trick guys.”
Though some pieces have changed, especially for Cleveland, there won’t be much trickery against the Wizards.
Washington is still basically the same team that lost to the Cavaliers in six thrilling games in the 2006 playoffs, the last two overtime thrillers that came down to the final buzzer.
The teams split four regular-season games in 2007-08, each winning twice on its home floor. Washington’s Gilbert Arenas, who is averaging 19 points off the bench after making a late-season return from knee surgery, did not play in any of those games, while Caron Butler missed one game for the Wizards and James, Ilgauskas and Gibson all missed a game for the Cavaliers.
Other than Pavlovic, who is out with a sprained ankle, and some knee soreness for Washington’s Butler and Arenas, both teams are healthy and ready to go, with the Cavaliers confident they can eliminate the Wizards for the third straight year despite their up-and-down regular season.
“This is a no-excuse league,” Szczerbiak said. “This team hasn’t made any excuses. Guys just go out and play hard and try to win. That’s what it’s all about.”
Though no one in the national media — or even in Cleveland, for that matter — is expecting the Cavaliers to duplicate their unprecedented 2007 run to the NBA Finals, the players in wine and gold aren’t ruling it out.
“Nobody gave us a chance last year,” Gibson said. “Our main goal has been keeping it in the locker room. Us 15 (players) all believe we can make it to the championship. Everyone else will believe once we get there.”
Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net.

NEXT UP

WHO: Cleveland (45-37) vs. Washington (43-39)
WHAT: Game 1, first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, best-of-seven series
WHEN: Saturday, 12:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Q
TV/RADIO: ESPN; WEOL 930-AM, WTAM 1100-AM

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