LeBron James, Cavaliers Avoid Hero-Ball, Pass Another West Test vs. Grizzlies

MEMPHIS — The ending looked easy, almost embarrassingly so. But to focus solely on that would ignore all that was required to achieve it.

Kevin Love darting out of a screen to the top to take a Kyrie Irving drop-off. Love drawing a second defender by feigning a shot, before an over-the-head bounce to LeBron James jogging the baseline. James picking up speed before sending the sphere behind him, a little high for Irving, but not too high that the point guard couldn't whip it left to the elbow to J.R. Smith, who swung it left to the corner to James.

Who was alone.

More alone than he's ever been in public.

Alone enough to gather, stare and bounce before firing as poor Marc Gasol sprawled too late to invade his sightline or deter his stroke.

Joe Murphy/Getty Images

"Just take your time, trust your mechanics and just shoot it," James said, after he and the Cavaliers passed their most significant test remaining in the regular season, with a 111-89 rout of the Memphis Grizzlies. "I saw a lot of room. I didn't want to rush it. I had a lot of time to get the laces right and just take the shots I take when I work on my game. And I was able to drain it."

Again, it sounds simple when he says it like that, but it wasn't on that possession, just as it wasn't easy to get where they're at right now, where they can record assists on all 14 baskets in the third quarter against one of the NBA's better defensive teams, where Grizzlies television analyst Brevin Knight can say "these guys look like the San Antonio Spurs passing the basketball" and nobody snickers.

The Cavaliers finished with 30 assists on 43 field goals.

"Outstanding," Cavaliers coach David Blatt said. "About as good as we've seen so far this year."

And not an overnight improvement.

"Early on in the season, we weren't the team we are now obviously, but I've always said it's a process, and you have to understand that, and we all have to understand that it's a process," James said. "And it's good to know where we are right now and the type of game that we're playing right now."

That game hardly resembles the one in the season's first couple of months, when they recorded all of six assists in an entire game against Utah, when they were frequently reliant on a then-gimpy James to carry them with isolation excellence. Instead, his efficiency suffered.

They still revert to that at times, but rarely Wednesday, not with Irving (24) and Love (22) outscoring James (20), and not when they scored 36 points to pull away in the third quarter and James had just three of them, all on that single connection from the corner.

"That's what we want to do every night," James said. "Obviously you can't get assists if you don't make shots. But I think the ball movement, there's just this great karma to the game when you're moving the ball and everyone is feeling great about it, and everyone knows they are going to be a recipient of a pass.

"Tonight the way we moved the ball, the way we shared the ball, it's very key to our success. It's very key to everyone feeling involved. And we can be a very dangerous team if we can continue to do that."

The aforementioned sequence was as symbolic as it was significant, as it seemed to portend the upcoming postseason: James waiting in the corner for someone—or some team—from the West to contest him.

For all the justified talk about the disparity of depth between the conferences, with as many as 11 teams from the West headed for better records than all but five in the East, the Spurs' sage Tim Duncan made a salient point when asked for his opinion Tuesday.

"I know it's maddening to a lot of people, especially the guys in that nine or 10 spot who miss the playoffs by a game or so but could be the third or fourth seed in the East," Duncan told Bleacher Report.

"I have no idea what it is, but it is what it is. You have some very good teams in the East, and the Finals the last couple of years have been great, very good matchups. So it's not like there's a huge disparity in that respect."

There's a huge point worth making about that:

James represented the East in those NBA Finals.

And if he represents it again, as is seeming increasingly likely as the Atlanta Hawks struggle to find their edge, the Chicago Bulls struggle to find their health and the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors struggle to find believers, he will do so with considerable confidence.

Not only did the Cavaliers win 14 of their final 15 games against the West—with their final nine outings against the East—but they also finished 9-7 against the top eight in the stronger conference, beating every team but Houston at least once, while sweeping the two-game sets against the Grizzlies and Clippers. And they were 8-3 against those teams when James played, with him missing the other five.

"Good luck in the playoffs," Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger said as he shook Blatt's hand.

They'll only meet again if both reach the NBA Finals. That's no given for either side, but the spread-out playoff schedule, with no back-to-backs, would seem to favor the Cavaliers, in light of their 11-0 record when they have a day off and then a day of practice.

"Guys were fresh and they were hungry and they were ready," Blatt said.

That showed on defense, too, even though the Grizzlies helped by missing several layups early; Zach Randolph and Jeff Green combined to make just six of 19 shots. Once the Cavaliers settled in, there was no stopping them.

It's sort of like this season, ever since the trades for Smith and Timofey Mozgov and Iman Shumpert, ever since the insertion of Smith and Mozgov into the starting lineup to complement James, Irving and Love. That lineup is a preposterous plus-187 in 412 minutes, while shooting a collective 51.1 percent from the floor.

"That's dope," Smith said, when told of some of the statistics.

He credited management for putting the group together.

"The starting unit really complements each other extremely well," Smith said. "If we want to go inside-out against a smaller team, we can do that with Timo and Kev. And if people try to go big, we can space the floor extremely with myself, 'Bron, Kevin, Kyrie of course. Timo can shoot the 18-, 19-footer.

"Our overall knack for the ball, that's a huge key on rebounds. I don't know if anybody had as many big rebounding games as Kev has in the last few years. 'Bron. Timo is a big body, gets a hand on a lot of shots. It really makes it easy for Kyrie and I to get back and set our defense."

He thought the pieces would fit.

"I just thought it would take more time than it has, honestly," Smith said. "You very rarely have situations where stuff fits like that. The only time it happened like that was when Boston won in their first year together (2008). Other than that, it hasn't really worked right off the bat."

It has worked well enough to go 28-6 since a 19-20 start.

"We have been on this amazing run," Irving said.

That's largely because they're running with more purpose in the half court and passing with more precision.

If that continues, they may all be alone, together, at the end.