Larry Hughes is a shooter

(This is the sentence wherein we pay lip service to the Suns-Spurs Game 3 (Winner in bold!), which was a better game, with more interesting storylines, and a more important outcome series-wise.)

If you’re making a list of complaints about lasterday’s Cleveland loss to New Jersey, you may want to start with something along the lines of “Oh, the Cavs were actually at the game?”

Getting more specific, it’s possible one could break into some sort of commentary on why Larry Hughes took 20 shots, as opposed to LeBron James’s 16 shots. (To be fair, Larry actually went 9-20, although we would’ve sworn it was more like 4-52.)

Perhaps the biggest reason CLE lost the game comes down to the season-long love affair they have with just not feeling like it sometimes. Yep, they were outrebounded by the Nets.

“They wanted it more than us,” Cavs center Zydrunas Ilgauskas said. “Their backs were against the wall. They had nothing to lose, so they came out and were physical and they kept us off the boards, which was huge for us in the first two games.”

Geez, even their post-game quotes are lackluster.

This sin’t to take anything away from the Nets, who had a monster triple-double from Jason Kidd, survived the devastating blow of Vince Carter’s bruised pinkie-finger, and are the far, far, far inferior team. They just are – they were actively trying to give the Cavs the game in the fourth quarter, yet Cleveland…whatever.

As for not having anything to lose, Z…what about (by our calculations) the 6 days of rest you just handed the Lasers, assuming they sweep the Bulls today? And that assumes you win this series in 5 games.

On the positive side, we’re growing a healthly dislike for Mikki Moore, so that fuels the passion for tomorrow’s Game 4 a little more. We need it, since the Cavaliers took our renewed enthusiasm for them and reminded us of the team that made us sick all season.