No Excuses: The Orlando Magic Were Better Than LeBron and the Cavs

So much is being made of LeBron James' refusal to shake hands and address the media after the Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Orlando Magic last night.

The blame game about whether it was LeBron's fault or his teammates' fault for not going to the Finals has been started and been played.

If you search hard enough, you can find any reason to blame LeBron James for the Cavs' downfall or the rest of the Cavs for not supporting LeBron.  You can pull up statistics to support either side of the argument, I'm sure. 

A lot of this has to do with LeBron (and, by extension, the Cavaliers') growing fan base.  Some of it has to do with LeBron entering the "Kobe Zone" where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't in the eyes of many fans.

But all this hoopla takes away from the real story: the Orlando Magic were a better team than the Cleveland Cavaliers over the course of the past two weeks.

The Cavaliers' struggles against the other top three teams (the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Orlando Magic) in the league during the regular season have been well-documented.

However, they were still heavily favored going into this series against the Orlando Magic even though they struggled more against the Magic than the other two elite teams of the season. 

This included an Orlando victory two weeks before the playoffs that was probably Cleveland's most embarrassing loss during the season to any team besides the Washington Wizards.

Orlando did a good job of running their inside-outside games.  No one is going to think any of the Cavs' bigs are going to guard Dwight Howard straight up. 

And when Howard was doubled up, the other Magic guys did a great job knocking down their shots on a consistent basis.

When the Cavs had to respect Orlando's shooters, Dwight Howard made them repeatedly pay inside. 

The Magic exploited their match-up advantages better in this series than any other team in any other series in the playoffs.  It's what the Lakers should have done against the short-handed (and just plain short) Rockets team without Yao Ming.

It's easy to forget that this series was one LeBron James Game 2 buzzer-beater away from being a sweep.  If he doesn't make that shot, this series ends at Game 4.  As big of a shot as that was, that shot isn't the story of the series.

The Orlando Magic should be the story coming out of the Eastern Conference.  And come Thursday, no one will have a choice but to make them the story one way or another.