A well-deserved day off for the guys today, with two practices coming up prior to game 3 on Saturday on FSN...

All season long the Nets have been trying to keep the Cavs off the boards in their 5 meetings (including 3 regular season games)...the Cavs have won 4 of the games...and digest these numbers...The Cavs have out boarded the Nets, 227-174...a difference of 53 over 5 games...On the offensive glass...78-30...a difference of 48 over those 5 duals...as a result the Cavs have taken 59 more shots....59!!! That's nearly a disparity of 12 a game..

The point is this...the Cavs are too big and too strong for the Nets...they can talk about gang rebounding, and boxing out, all they want, but the Cleveland bigs are too big for them...can NJ win a game or two in this series? Of course...but it will take a turnover-prone, poor shooting effort by the Cavs for that to happen...

How about Sasha Pavlovic rising to the challenge of playing Vince Carter head-to-head...Vinsanity is still capable of taking over games, and still may do so in this series, but right now, Sasha is staying in front of Carter, and with help from the Cavs'
everyone-on-a-chain defense, Carter can not get to the hole...he's being forced to take jump shots...and at the other end, Sasha is being aggressive...Carter has games of 21 and 26 points...but he is 17 for 49 shooting...that's 35%...Sasha has had games of 17 and 15 points...on 54% shooting...this is more than a case of Carter just missing open looks...

One other observation...the crowd last night was the best one I've heard at The Q since game-6 of the Pistons series last spring...it was a hungry crowd...one that was proactive instead of waiting for something to cheer about...it may sound corny, but 20,562 made a difference....especially in hustle areas of defense and rebounding...two bedrock components for winning a championship...

See you Saturday at 4:30 on FSN Ohio, with Cavaliers Live pre game, followed by Game-3 at 5 on FSN, and Cavaliers Live post game...