INDEPENDENCE — No offense intended, but the Cavaliers aren’t going to be paying a whole lot of attention when the Boston Celtics raise their 17th NBA championship banner tonight at TD Banknorth Garden.
“We don’t need to be out there watching that,” LeBron James said Monday following practice at Cleveland Clinic Courts. “We need to get ready for the game. Congratulations to them, but we’re not fans.”
As the Cavaliers prepare to begin the 2008-09 season tonight at 8 with a nationally televised game on TNT, they want what the Celtics have.
They also know they’re probably going to have to go through Boston, which eliminated them in seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals a year ago, to get it.
“They’re going to raise the banner,” new point guard Mo Williams said. “It’s going to be a motivational tool for us.
“If you want to be champs, you’ve got to knock the champs off. They’re the champions right now. They’ve got the throne.”
The Cavaliers, however, have never been sitting as pretty as they are right now, as they open the 39th season in franchise history with legitimate title aspirations.
James, the preseason pick of NBA general managers to win the league’s MVP award, enters his sixth pro season knowing what it takes to win it all.
Williams, acquired in the offseason from Milwaukee, gives the Cavaliers the high-scoring, up-tempo point guard they’ve always lacked.
Add two-time All-Star center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, defensive-minded power forward Ben Wallace, shooting guard Delonte West — he “most likely” will get the starting nod, according to coach Mike Brown — and Cleveland is healthy and ready to go as it prepares to open the season against Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Co.
Toss in a fairly deep bench that features Anderson Varejao, Daniel “Boobie” Gibson, Wally Szczerbiak, Sasha Pavlovic and J.J. Hickson and it’s easy to see why the Cavaliers enter the first of 82 regular-season games with high hopes.
“We’re extremely confident,” Williams said. “We feel like we should win (throughout the season). We feel like it’s in our hands.”
Brown is equally optimistic, but he begins his fourth season as a head coach preaching the same one-day, one-game-at-a-time mantra he always has.
“I’m trying not to get too high or too low,” Brown said. “The rah-rah stuff is good in football because you only play once a week and you only have 16 games. Here, you have 82 of them.”
That’s why the Cavaliers, whose home opener is Thursday at 7 p.m. against Charlotte, vow to stay on an even keel regardless of what happens tonight.
“Every year I’ve been coaching, there’s been expectations,” Brown said. “There’s none higher than we put on ourselves. I don’t look at it as we’ve got to live up to what other people expect.”
Said James, who led the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals in 2007: “We can’t sneak up on any teams. We know that. We’re ready for the challenge.”
Unusually serious and short-answered during his post-practice session with the media, James said simply, “I’m ready.”
Tip-ins
Brown is strongly leaning toward starting West because “he’s versatile. He fits well with that group. Defensively, he’s good.”
(bullet) With West expected to get the nod over Pavlovic, it will be interesting to see how Brown rotates his guards with Gibson, Szczerbiak and Pavlovic coming off the bench. Pavlovic or Szczerbiak could play sparingly, depending on the opponent.
(bullet) Williams, who is playing for a title contender for the first time in six NBA seasons, is extremely excited to be in the situation he’s in.
“This is the first time I’ve had high expectations of winning a championship,” he said. “It’s where I wanted to be. It’s a basketball player’s dream to compete for a championship.”
He added: “We’ve got to be mentally prepared. It’s long, long, long. A lot of guys are going to be on vacation and we’re still going to be going through two-hour practices.”
(bullet) The Cavaliers are 10-28 lifetime in season openers.
Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net.

TONIGHT

WHO: Cleveland at Boston
TIME: 8 o’clock
WHERE: TD Banknorth Garden
TV: TNT; WEOL 930-AM, WTAM 1100-AM

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