The rest of the anaylsis

There's lots of points to discuss about last night, and most of them are unacceptable. I'll start with what I know about from personal experience.

My ticket last night cost more than my rent. I couldn't afford it normally so I REALLY appreciated it. That appreciation means that I rose to my feet from the first minute and let my voice be heard. I was going to have a GREAT time. But the people in my immediate vicinity were not so financially strapped as I, and clearly they did not appreciate how exhilarating it is to sit so close to an NBA Playoff game. The louder fans were not in my area. As I made attempts to exhort the fans to scream, I found that the ones wearing LeBron jerseys about 30-50 yards behind me were having MUCH more fun. These are the fans who deserve the up-close tickets, and I will never understand how someone can spend over 1 grand on a pair of tickets to sit there and talk on your cell phone.

When I got home around 2am I decided to watch the game on DVR. It was then and only then that I learned about Head Coach Mike Brown not giving an inspirational speech to the team before the game. Are you kidding me? I know these guys should be able to get fired up on their own, but how can you...as the leader of this team....not take full advantage of the opportunity? And come to think of it, where were you for the rest of the game? Why did Z sit so long and Hughes get to stay on the court? Eric Snow sat for extended periods of the game, and he's the one player who knows how to pull a team together in a series-clincher. When Pavlovic got a flagrant foul (for the horrible crime of swatting a ball), did you confront the referee? Your coaching was MIA last night, even more than Hughes' jump shot.

By the way, does anybody remember if Drew Gooden played last night? He did, but his performance was invisible, neither good nor bad. I'm not used to having Gooden have a game like that, and it's rapidly becoming the most unsettling aspect of Game 5. I know that Mikki Tyler Moore is not his responsibility, but I'd really like to see DG on the attack against Moore in Game 6. Gooden has the ability to intimidate opponents, and I think Moore would be the perfect man to get inside his head and force him out of the flow he's finding (or at least be in his face when he shoots a 15-footer, something the rest of the Cavaliers seem to be unable to accomplish).

Four days ago, we were on the verge of a Detroit/Cleveland rematch in the Eastern Conference Finals. Both teams appearance in that ECF are now in peril, and both can be traced back to total complacency by the Cavs and Pistons. We all assumed they had it in the bag, and we forgot to tell the Nets and Bulls they were eliminated.