Photo: AP/John Raoux

If you were waiting to see why Danny Ferry made the particular moves he did this offseason, tonight was your resounding and emphatic answer. Yes, the Orlando Magic were on a back-to-back, without their top two power forwards (All-Star Rashard Lewis and Ryan Anderson), and the Cavaliers were fresh off four days rest, but you cannot deny the fact that the Cavaliers went into Amway Arena tonight and beat a 6-2 Magic team, something that was all too difficult in last year's Eastern Conference Finals.

New faces in so many places: LeBron James, Mo Williams, and Dwight Howard were the only three starters in tonight's game that started in last summer's Eastern Conference Finals series. Rafer Alston, Courtney Lee, and Hedo Turkoglu have departed for other teams, Rashard Lewis is serving a suspension, and Anderson Varejao, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Delonte West are now coming off of the bench. West missed tonight's game after reportedly missing the team's flight to Orlando, and Brian Windhorst revealed that Delonte has battled a fear of flying at times. Fortunately, the Cavaliers were fine without Delonte tonight, but he may return to action tomorrow night in Miami.

Superman vs. Superman: The battle of the men of steel lived up to the billing at the outset. Both teams entered the ball to their respective big men in the hopes of getting the other into foul trouble. The Cavaliers lucked out with a cheap foul on Dwight Howard that was followed up by a hard foul that sent Howard to the bench just over two minutes into the game. Both fouls were drawn by Shaq, and the big fella showed a calculated patience in attacking the game's best big man. O'Neal had just three first quarter points, but he did his job as Howard was forced to sit for nearly ten minutes. Dwight picked up his third foul while hip checking Mo Williams in the corner, but "The Master of Panic", Stan Van Gundy, chose to leave him out on the floor. That led to some questionable officiating, but Howard still failed to make a huge impact. O'Neal picked up his third foul on a questionable illegal screen call in the second quarter, then was forced to sit just three and a half minutes into the second half after a poor choice of fouling Howard directly underneath the bucket. The battle fizzled out in the second half as the Cavaliers stretched their lead, the Magic continued to chuck up outside shots, and O'Neal sat due to foul trouble, but the message was sent. Dwight Howard is going to have to work much harder against the Cavaliers this season, and the Cavaliers with O'Neal now have a fighting chance to break close to even in that battle, which is all they are looking for in the grand scheme of things. In 32 minutes, Howard managed just three shots, making them all while shooting 5-of-12 from the foul line. He finished with 11 points, 7 rebounds, and 1 block. Shaq was limited to 20 minutes, but battled for 10 points on 4-of-8 from the floor, adding 4 rebounds and 2 blocks.

Mo-demption: All Mo Williams heard during the offseason was how he didn't perform in the Eastern Conference Finals, how he wasn't a big-time player, how he didn't deserve his All-Star bid. Rising to the occasion tonight, Mo had one of his hottest shooting, yet all around high-focus games as a Cavalier. Williams had a perfect shooting 9-of-9 first half for his 22 points, and lifted the wine and gold during LBJ's break in the early second quarter with two key trey balls. Mo also made several fantastic passes in the early going and finished with six assists. In the Cavaliers' wins, Williams is averaging 19.8 points per game, as opposed to just 13 ppg in the three Cavalier losses. When Mo is shooting the ball well, the Cavalier offense has such a better balance, and it forces LeBron to make sure he gets the ball to Mo, which facilitates better offensive execution overall.

Rotation Tinkering Continues: With Delonte West M.I.A., Mike Brown continued to mold his bench substitution schedule. The first subs tonight did not include Z and Gibson (or West), as usual. Instead, Jamario Moon and Anderson Varejao were the first on the scene. Moon had battled to see playing time daylight, but considering this team is one of the main reasons he was brought in, it was nice to see MB go to him early. Gibson and Ilgauskas subbed in together later in the quarter as the Cavaliers went with a nine-man rotation once again tonight. The bench shot just 2-for-15 tonight, but they still played positive minutes, with 22 rebounds combined and strong effort on the defensive end. Strong performances turned in by the starting five made the bench's job that much easier tonight, and the minutes spread was acceptable tonight: Varejao (25), Gibson (25), Ilgauskas (24), Moon (15).

New Defensive Scheme Pays Dividends: With Orlando lacking a stretch four this evening, the game plan was quite clear: make them beat the Cavaliers from the outside. Tonight, it worked, but it could have just as easily blown up in the team's face (see: file footage of last year's Eastern Conference Finals). Orlando shot just 4-for-18 (22 percent) from behind the arc, and the tables turned even more as the Cavs were able to flash the sweet stroke from deep at a 71 percent rate (10-of-14).

The main wrinkle that the Cavaliers showed in their defense was a hard double team of Howard on the block with O'Neal on the bench. In last year's playoffs, it was often a guard or James coming down to help double, but tonight the Cavaliers brought the backside big man to help on Howard. This strategy worked quite well because Orlando failed to move the ball well, the Cavaliers were much better at covering shooters, and the Magic flat out missed shots.

Orlando helped make game-planning for them much easier in the Cavs' eyes after letting Turkoglu walk to Toronto. Turkoglu, combined with Lewis and Howard, was a matchup nightmare for the Cavaliers. Now, replacing him with Carter makes the Orlando lineup much more conventional and guardable for Cleveland. With James covering Lewis, who may get to play some small forward anyway, and the new wings or West covering Carter, things do not land in Orlando's corner quite so blatantly.

Seeing double (centers): With the typical NBA big man becoming more athletic and perimeter-oriented, it's rare to see two giants of the paint like O'Neal and Howard do battle. What is even more rare is seeing a 2-on-2 low-post showdown. That's what fans saw tonight for a good chunk of the second quarter as Dwight Howard played alongside backup center Marcin Gortat and did battle with Shaq and Big Z. The only other time I see this happening is when the Cavaliers do battle with the Lakers (and the Pau Gasol/Andrew Bynum frontcourt).

Swing and a miss, stripes: To say that the officiating was flat-out awful tonight is a stretch. However, it was unfortunate that after perhaps giving Dwight Howard an unfair shake early, that the three-man crew refused to call obvious fouls on Howard. Take for instance the second quarter play where LeBron drove to the basket on Mickael Pietrus. After LeBron knocked over Pietrus (a possible charge, granted), Howard shoved James after he released the shot, then as him and Z were battling, he shoved Z in the back. Two blatant fouls that the official refused to call for fear of getting ripped in half by Howard. Instead, the call went against Z and Howard actually winded up shooting free throws. Look, if Van Gundy is dumb enough to leave Howard out there with three fouls in the first half, then he should be able to handle a whistle against his big man when it's obvious. Officials trying to make up for earlier mistakes turns a well-officiated game into a poorly-officiated one quickly.

Young hustler: J.J. Hickson had his best game this season and saw extended action thanks to Shaq's foul trouble. In 23 minutes, Hickson scored 9 points and grabbed 6 rebounds, while helping in the Howard trap scheme. Most importantly, Hickson did the little things right tonight, with several positive hustle plays while boxing out and maintaining good rebounding position. One of the plays that showed Hickson was on target tonight was when he came over from the weakside to steal an entry pass to Dwight Howard. The move of J.J. into the starting lineup is more about what it does for the bench rather than J.J., but if Hickson can give the team 10-12 minutes of solid play like tonight, the experiment will likely live on.

Getting testy: Things got heated at least twice tonight. Mo Williams and Vince Carter were chirping at each other quite feverishly, then Dwight Howard and Anderson Varejao got tied up and were assessed a double foul. Perhaps Carter is frustrated, remembering his struggles against the Cavaliers in the 2007 playoffs, when former Cavalier Sasha Pavlovic effectively shut him down?

Offensive stall and crawl to the finish: The team played the near perfect game, leading by as much as 22 in the fourth quarter. But, once again, the Cavaliers coasted across the finish line. It started when James checked back in the game after over five minutes of rest to start the fourth. The offensive movement came to a grinding halt, as LBJ seemed complacent with chucking up a perimeter shot with the shot clock winding down. The result was that Orlando cut the lead to just nine when the buzzer sounded. If you can recall the giant leads from the first two games of the ECF last year, you know that no lead is ever safe against Orlando. The Cavaliers should beware how they played the last few minutes of this one.

goes to: Mo Williams and LeBron James. The dynamic duo combined for 64 points on 25-of-43 shooting, 9 rebounds, and 10 assists. When Mo is playing this well, it makes it that much easier for LeBron to sneak loose on backdoor plays, which he did a couple of times tonight.

Team Grade: A

I was leaning toward an A+ until the last six minutes where the Cavaliers were outscored by Orlando 21-10. But the Cavaliers get an "A for effort" combined with their 48 percent shooting, including 10-of-14 on threes. They did allow the Magic to shoot 45 percent, but the late surge inflated that number, and that's not a bad figure against a strong shooting team like Orlando. Mike Brown would probably also point out the team's 14 turnovers as well.

The wine and gold two-game swing continues tomorrow night in Miami.

All for one. One for all.

Kirk

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