Cavaliers, James can’t overcome Wizards, 108-91

By BRIAN WINDHORST

WASHINGTON — It is rare for anyone to straight up outplay LeBron James and it is simply unheard of to see anyone get inside his head. But no matter what the stats say, that certainly appears to have been the case Wednesday night in the Washington Wizards’ 108-91 win over the Cavaliers.

There’s been so much trash talk and hard fouls — and even venomous rap songs — between James and the Washington Wizards’ DeShawn Stevenson.

This time, though, the worm turned, and in a most bizarre and unexpected way. All on Stevenson’s “bobble hand” night. The sellout crowd got tattoo-free figurines with the Stevenson’s hand wagging in front of his plastic face.

James had 34 points on 12-of-20 shooting with nine assists and two steals on Wednesday. Stevenson didn’t take a single shot and didn’t even get off the bench until the game was more than 30 minutes old. Yet, his impact on James was both obvious and profound.

There were plenty of factors. Without Shaquille O’Neal and Anderson Varejao, the Cavs were burned on the interior all night. Mo Williams and J.J. Hickson both went from very hot to very cold in ugly and mistake-filled performances.

But the core of it seemed to be Stevenson disrupting James’ entire viewpoint of the game to the point where James hurt himself out of sheer frustration.

“It is not even about that for me, I don’t know about anyone else’s mind frame,” James said. “We don’t try to do that, we just try to win games.”

But his face belied his emotions, which were like his left wrist, wounded. It happened on a vicious dunk with three minutes remaining and the Cavs down 16 points. He re-aggravated a two-week old injury suffered against the Wizards at home when he fell on the wrist. It was sore after the game, but he didn’t need X-rays.

As soon as Stevenson entered and started guarding James, he seemed to become obsessed with the 1-on-1 match-up. James stopped passing and started dribbling, locking eyes with Stevenson and start to fire crazy jumpers over him.

“In general our entire team, LeBron included, brought the ball to a standstill,” Cavs coach Mike Brown said.

James made a couple of more baskets, two of them meaningless dunks when it was decided. But he went just 4-of-11 the rest of the way, most of it with Stevenson on him as he turned it over three times. The Cavs had just three more assists.