Cleveland 116, Washington 86

This is what Danny Ferry had in mind when he snagged Ben Wallace, Delonte West, and Wally Szczerbiak at the trade deadline.  They needed a physical presence, a solid ball handler, and another outside threat.  What they got last night was complete domination of the Wizards.  They beat up Washington physically, and ran the ball straight down their throat.

The Wiz are completely out of sorts.  They got frustrated, chippy, and ran no semblance of an offense in the 2nd half.  Almost every possession had a 1-on-5 play with no board crashing whatsoever.  Heaven forbid they run a play for Caron Butler to take on Szczerbiak, or move Brendan Haywood out of the post and make Ilgauskas defend him.  Their whole gameplan now is to try and knock LeBron around with their bigs.  That didn't work so well last night - he's pretty good (30/9/12, ho hum).  The Cavs killed them on the boards (49-34), they let Wally and Daniel Gibson go off from deep, Agent Zero got a stupid technical foul, Haywood got kicked out for a flagrant foul...they say that a series doesn't start until the home team loses, but Washington shows zero signs of having the composure to take out Cleveland.

Utah 90, Houston 84

So much for Utah's road woes.  Two straight wins on the Rockets' home court, and now they get two at the Delta Center, where they're only 37-4 this season.

McGrady just looks fried during the fourth quarter of every game.  9-22 from the field last night, but down the stretch he just couldn't do much of anything.  The Rockets miss Rafer Alston more than they thought (PG Bobby Jackson had two assists in 30 minutes).  Having a shot blocker like Mutombo doesn't help much when the Jazz can just have Mehmet Okur drag him out to the 3-point line.  Nice to see that Utah can pull together when Boozer and Kirilenko have a bad game, and that they've got a backup point with the stones to take a big shot like Ronnie Price did last night.  Two more wins and McGrady goes home a first round loser again.