What to watch for on a cold Cleveland night when the Cavaliers face the Atlanta Hawks:

1.  How will the Hawks defend LeBron James?  LeBron leads the league in scoring at 29.5 points per game, and he has been getting fat against medicore teams, with 41 against Chicago (twice) and Indiana, and 38 against New Jersey.  LeBron looked mortal on Wednesday against the Pistons, but so did the rest of the team facing the back-to-back.  Tonight, LeBron faces a Hawks team that that is without it’s best defender in Josh Smith, one of the few players in the league with the physical tools to defend James both on the perimeter and in the lane.  It would have been interesting to see LeBron and Smith battling, especially when LeBron goes to the power forward spot.  As it is, Marvin Williams will likely see most of the LeBron duty tonight, as he tries to hold LeBron below the 31points he averaged against the Hawks last season.  Without Smith in the lineup and with center Al Horford still working his way back from an ankle injury, LeBron will certainly have an opportunity to fill the scorecard.

Hopefully it will look a lot like LeBron’s last game against the Hawks in Cleveland, when he scored 19 points in the Fourth Quarter to lead the team to a victory. 

2.   How will the Cavs defend Joe Johnson?  When the Hawks were jetting out to a 6-0 start, it was Johnson, not LeBron James, who ended the first week of the season leading the league in scoring.  Johnson is now fourth at 25.7 ppg, trailing only LeBron, Miami’s Dwayne Wade (28.2 ppg), and Toronto’s Chris Bosh (26.9 ppg).   Now you see why everyone is so excited about the free agent class of 2010 - the top four scorers in the league are going to be free agents that Summer.  Johnson has recieved the least hype of the four, but he established himself as a clutch scorer in last year’s playoff matchup against the Boston Celtics, and he has the skills to make the Cavaliers’ lives hard tonight.  The Cavs did a solid job against Vince Carter on Tuesday, and Carter is not a bad comparison talent-wise to Johnson (attitude is a whole other matter).  Still, the matchup with Johnson is yet another tough test for Delonte West and any other Cavaliers charged with keeping Johnson off the scoreboard.

3.  Can the Cavs stay focused during what could be an easy week?  The Cavaliers face the Hawks tonight with Atlanta playing the second leg of a back-to-back.  The team will then head to New York to face the new-look Knicks - and all the distractions that come with it - before coming back home to play an Oklahoma City Thunder team that just fired its head coach.   The they have another back-to-back for the weekend, facing the Golden State Warriors on Black Friday before closing the week in Milwaukee against the Bucks.  It may be five games in eight nights, but with the exception of Atlanta none of those teams are going to make the playoffs this season.  The Cavs have gotten fat off of an easy schedule so far this season, and if they stay focused they can continue to make hay well into December.  They will have a talent advantage in every one of these games.  If they lose, it will likely be because they couldn’t muster the kind of effort and concentration necessary really dominate in the regular season.  Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’d be very surprised if the Cavs lost a game this week.

Go Cavs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under What to Watch For. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.