Cavs drop 3rd of last 5.

The Cavs aren't playing very good basketball right now.
The reality of basketball in Cleveland is that the new look Cavs are almost as dependent on Ilgauskas as they are on James. All the guys brought in were to help compliment Lebron and Z.

I know a lot of people consider this Cavs team to be deeper with the recently acquired players, but thats' only true from a numbers perspective. Basically Z is what makes Ben Wallace (potentially) a decent NBA player again.

I firmly believe that the only reason the Cavs won the Portland game was because of some back spasms sidelining Ben Wallace for the second half. Having only Joe Smith and Varejao to work with Mike Brown actually slid Lebron down to the power forward spot for parts of the second half. It worked pretty well. Lebron even did a respectable job on Lamarcus Aldridge at times.

Now it's relatively pointless to advocate playing Lebron at the PF spot more since it's been done a thousand times now by everyone from Charles Barkley to myself, and because it's my impression that Lebron simply doesn't want to play anything other than a wing position. This is where the coach is supposed to come in. Now it's not a good idea for Mike Brown to tell Lebron "tough, you're playing the 4 until Z's back," and I'm not sure there's a single NBA coach that it would be a good idea for.

So why not put in a four guard set? The offense isn't sacrificed like it is now with the now famed Ben Wallace / Anderson Varejao frontcourt. Defensively any of the Smith / Wallace / Varejao's paired with James can rebound at a high enough rate to keep it from becoming a liability. The rebounding is further eased with Devin Brown and Delonte West on the floor, who both rebound very well for smaller players.

Actually, that Delonte West guy might remember a thing or two about an offense like this. He was on that St. Joe's team that did pretty well running one. Unfortunately it's something that I think has to be integrated to survive this stretch without Ilgauskas. It might not be a bad idea to start working on it for life after Z too.

My final point: If someone who has never seen an NBA game saw Lebron James and Amare Stoudemire standing next to eachother, how would they tell which one was the top flight power forward and which one was the top flight point-forward-shooting-guard thing?