i knew the cavs were going to struggle out of the gate this year, not just because of all their new pieces they needed to incorporate, but because of the loss of one big piece, namely offensive coach john kuester. make no mistake about it, the main reason the cavs won 66 games last year was because for the first time in the lebron era, they finally had some other scoring options other than lebron going 1-on-5 thanx to the offensive sets that coach kuester had developed. but now that kuester fled to that state up north, the cavs moved former defensive coach mike malone into that spot and he obviously is no john kuester as the cavs offense this season has looked like it's stuck in mud in just about every game so far except for 3 quarters of the washington game. once they figure out how to better utilize shaq and play off him instead of through him, they will continue to struggle and lose more of the games against the likes of chicago and toronto which they would have won last year, even with wally contract, ben wallace and sasha pavlovic. there is no doubt they have more talent on their roster this season, but they also have a much lesser coaching staff and as such they will "only" win about 55 games, which should still be good enough for a division title and the # 3 seed in the east. the question is, will it be good enough to win the title??? we can only hope.

Good points, thanks for stopping by...if it does end up being 55 wins I'll take that...if it is good enough...we'll see, big test tonight against Orlando