Cavs crunched, 99-89

May 25, 2009 at 12:10a.m.

By BRIAN WINDHORST

Orlando has a 2-1 series lead after a nasty contest in Florida.

ORLANDO, Fla. — History says the team that wins Game 3 in a tied series ends up winning the whole thing most of the time.

But that statistic wasn’t needed Sunday night. The naked eye is enough to tell the direction the Eastern Conference Finals appear to be going. The Orlando Magic just seem to make the Cavaliers look like the underdog, their top-seed status and history-making regular season simply notwithstanding.

The Magic outplayed the Cavs again in Game 3, winning 99-89 to take a 2-1 series edge. The Cavs now need three wins in the next four games to reach The Finals. The Magic seem better equipped.

LeBron James had another excellent game, but it was not to the level his Games 1 and 2 efforts were in Cleveland. That’s certainly understandable, but with these circumstances it is just devastating to the Cavs’ chances.

Unlike during the regular season and first two rounds of the playoffs when his teammates constantly rose to his aid, it is not happening against the Magic. Mo Williams, Delonte West and on Sunday Zydrunas Ilgauskas just aren’t delivering. With much less margin for error, the recipe isn’t working.

James scored 41 points and supplemented with his usual nine rebounds and nine assists. But his jumper stayed back in Cleveland. He was just 2-of-16 shooting outside the paint and it doomed the Cavs. He got most of his points at the foul line, setting playoff career records by making 18 free throws in 24 tries.

Yet James ended up shooting 11-of-27 and Cavs finished at just 38 percent, more accurately showing how the game went.

It ruined what was the Cavs’ best defensive game of the series. They were able to scramble more and by playing Magic star Dwight Howard more one-on-one inside they were able to stay attached to the Magic’s shooters a little bit more. Orlando only shot 43 percent, which seriously is an accomplishment the way they have been running and the way their inside-out attack wreaks havoc on the Cavs’ defense.

It meant lots of fouls on Howard — and, hence plenty of foul trouble for the Cavs — when he got position. The plan was severely vanquished when he proceeded to go 14-of-19 at the foul line to finish with 24 points with nine rebounds. But that is just a significant detail.

Here is the rest.

The Magic have the decided edge in the frontcourt. Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard are All-Stars. It took one of the greatest playoff games of Ilgauskas’ career on Friday, when he had 12 points and 15 rebounds, just to cancel out Howard on a bad night.

So with that in mind, the Cavs are in need of quality play from their guards, where they have an All-Star in Williams and a gritty player who was in the middle of a career season in West. It isn’t happening, and the Cavs aren’t surviving without it.

Sunday, Williams managed just 5-of-15 shooting for 15 points. It didn’t make it easier when he suffered a nasty elbow from the Magic’s Anthony Johnson in the first half and needed four stitches around his eye. For the series, Williams is 18-of-55 from the field.

West has been a tad more effective but not close to the level the Cavs need to get ahead in the series.

With the Cavs in such need of a spark on offense, West was just 5-for-11 in Game 3 for 12 points. He’s shooting 13-of-31 in the three games.

The two added in some poor ball-handling just to make the point more clear. The Cavs gave it away 15 times. In an game where they could not score, that just undercut the effort even further.

Lewis, who had 15 points, and Howard had just average games. Yet it was enough to handle the Cavs’ frontcourt. Ilgauskas had nine points and nine rebounds and Anderson Varejao had four points and four rebounds. Both fouled out. It was easy math to see how the game played out.

So even though James won the battle with Hedo Turkoglu, who had his poorest scoring effort of the series with just 13 points on 1-of-11 shooting but still played well with nine rebounds and seven assists, the deficiencies elsewhere were too much to overcome.

Right now, so do the Magic.