"He's facilitatin'"

When given the opportunity to steal a road playoff win--nay a road conference finals win--as an underdog, it's a good idea to take that opportunity. The Cleveland Cavaliers did not.

Despite a career playoff low of 10 points out of LeBron James, the Cavs somehow still had a shot to win this game. Zydrunas Ilgauskas kept Cleveland in it through the fourth, knocking down mid-range set shots with an ease exclusive to balding, white Europeans. But the question of the night was where was LeBron?

At the half, he had four points but Cleveland had a six-point lead. On his way to the locker room, Craig Sager asked Larry Hughes how he felt about this considering King James had only two buckets and Hughes said, with a style and flair exclusive to men with teardrop tattoos on their faces, "He's facilitatin'."

And he was. James ended the night only one assist away from a triple-double. If he's Jason Kidd that's a typical, gutty performance. He's not Jason Kidd, however. He's a global icon in training and that might be the only great storyline left in this NBA Playoffs.

San Antonio, Utah, Cleveland, Detroit. Yawn. I thought the referees--in cahoots with the NBA higher-ups--were supposed to fix this. Major media markets, those are the best playoff teams, right? Not this year. This year the conference finals are all about watching LeBron grow up. Is he ready to take the next step? Can he lead a nearly talent-less team to the Finals?

That's a lot to ask, but that's why it's interesting in a way that Carlos Boozer v. Tim Duncan can never be.

Last night was not. Even with Cleveland close to stealing Game 1, the game felt lifeless. It would've been much more exciting to watch Cleveland lose by 15 while LeBron scored 38 points. Instead he took three shots in the 4th Quarter and made no trips to the free throw line.

I'm not being critical of LeBron. People are lining up to do that this morning. The pass that he made to a wide open Donyell Marshall was a savvy basketball play. If Marshall makes it James has his triple double, Cleveland has the lead with less than five seconds to play, and we'd still have a game that wasn't much fun to watch.

Excellence, that's what I want. I don't expect LeBron to lead Cleveland past a veteran Detroit squad, but I do expect him to add to his legend, to mature as a player and dazzle us a bit. There are thousands of casual NBA fans not living in any of the remaining playoff cities who need this.

LeBron, here we are now, entertain us.