Rick Noland

The Gazette

INDEPENDENCE – Cavaliers coach Mike Brown doesn’t claim to be an offensive guru and probably never will.

But once he became convinced his players fully grasped his defense-first mentality, which really wasn’t until the start of this season, he loosened the reins on offense and spent more practice time working on that end of the floor.

“Offensively, we’re better in every category,” Brown pointed out the other day without a trace of bravado. “We’re coaching better and we’re executing better.”

The Cavaliers are not only better, they’re significantly better than they were in Brown’s first three seasons as coach, when many people were calling for his head – or at least the hiring of an offensive-minded assistant.

Cleveland averaged 100.3 points in the regular season, which was nearly four points better than the pre-vious campaign. The Cavaliers also shot 46.8 percent from the field, which ranked sixth in the NBA and was a 2.9 percent increase from the previous season. Their 39.3 success rate on 3-pointers was second in the league and a 3.5 percent improvement from 2007-08.

“Teaching offense was a new experience for me,” Brown said. “I had to grow myself. I had to learn what I wanted to do.

“The reality of it is I’m a lot more comfortable now with telling guys what to do than I was last year.”

Another reality – and Brown will be the first to admit it – is the Cavaliers now have better players around sixth-year pro LeBron James.

The biggest addition was confident point guard Mo Williams, who gives the Cavaliers an explosive weapon off the dribble and a dangerous 3-point shooter.

Equally important was Brown’s decision to start Delonte West at shooting guard – he played the point after being acquired at the trade deadline in 2007-08 – which gives the Cavaliers yet another player who can create for himself and oth-ers.

“With Mo on the floor and with Delonte on the floor, it makes a tremendous difference,” Brown said. “Those guys have a great feel for the game.”

That’s also true of offen-sive-minded assistant coach John Kuester, who has been a huge help to Brown at that end of the floor.

Put all that together and the Cavaliers’ offense no longer consists of putting the ball in James’ hands, spreading the floor and waiting for the 6-foot-8, 250-pounder to create some-thing.

“Offensively, especially our first three years, it’s no secret we put the ball in LeBron’s hands,” Brown said.

The NBA Coach of the Year actually said much more than that, pointing out the Cavaliers not only used to put the ball in James’ hands to create their offense, but also to get it up the floor and get them into that offense.

With Cleveland now possessing three players who can legitimately run the offense, James is free to run off picks, post up or make back-door cuts.

“It’s always a matter of growth,” James said. “Our coach has grown and I’ve grown. You’ve got guys who trust the system.”

That system will always be centered around James. The way Brown sees it, it would be foolish not to capitalize on such a tremendous talent. That’s why the ball is still in James’ hands the majority of the time, and it’s also why Brown is perfectly willing to let his superstar take over a game when nothing else is working.

That’s exactly what James did in Cleveland’s Game 3 win over Atlanta in the Eastern Conference semifinals, when he made 15-of-25 shots from the field, including 5-of-10 3-pointers, en route to 47 points.

“There are games when we’re going to have to say, ‘Let’s defend and have LeBron go make a play for us offensively,’” Brown said.

That need usually increases as the playoffs progress, especially down the stretch of games, but James no longer has to try to do it all, all the time.

Of course, Brown’s Cava-liers were conditioned for three years to give the ball to James, spread the floor and be prepared to catch and shoot, so sometimes old habits die hard.

“We’ve got to be careful not to ask too much of LeBron – just pass it and watch,” center Zydrunas Ilgauskas cautioned. “We’ve got to have ball movement.”

More often than not, the Cavaliers have that, largely because James has always been a team-oriented player who trusts his teammates, even when they’re struggling. Not only that, James has a great under-standing of what his teammates can and cannot do, which allows him to get them the ball in spots where they have a good chance of being successful.

A case in point is Daniel Gibson, who has struggled mightily for most of the season but remains a dan-gerous 3-point shooter that teams have to respect.

Along the same lines, Wally Szczerbiak looks like a caveman when he attempts to handle the ball, but James knows the 6-7, 240-pound veteran can make threes when his feet are set, as well as take advantage of smaller guards in the low post, so he’s quick to give him the ball in those situa-tions.

Ilgauskas is no longer the dangerous post-up presence he was earlier in his career, but he and James have developed a tremendous chemistry on pick-and-pop plays.

James has developed the same chemistry with Anderson Varejao when it comes to finding the always-moving power forward on back-door cuts and slices to the hoop, making it even more difficult for teams to game plan for the Cavaliers.

“We have a lot more weapons and we trust each other on the court,” James said. “Everybody’s a threat to make a play for them-selves or someone else.

“We’ve got guys who can make shots,” he added. “When you’ve got guys who can make shots, the ball moves a lot better.”

The Cavaliers have even utilized the unconventional concept of having the diminutive Williams set picks for James, which often results in the small forward going against a smaller defender or Williams going against a slower one.

“We’ve added a lot of wrinkles to the offense,” Szczerbiak said. “And as high a level as LeBron played at last year, he’s at an even higher level this year.”

Brown is also coaching at a higher level, especially at the offensive end, but he’s learned through trial and error.

Thinking his team had matured to the point where he could lessen his practice-time emphasis on defense, Brown actually loosened the reins on offense at the start of the 2007-08 season.

That plan did not go as Brown had hoped. Instead of continuing to play great defense and running when the opportunity was there, the Cavaliers fell into the trap of thinking they could outscore teams.

That forced Brown to hammer the importance of defense into his players’ heads all over again, which is what he promised Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert he would do when he interviewed for the head coaching job in the summer of 2005.

Once that theory took hold for good, which is what finally happened this season, Brown told Gilbert the offensive progress would follow and the Cavaliers would become a complete team on both ends of the court.

“The same plan I gave Dan Gilbert when I inter-viewed for this job is still sitting in my office,” Brown said. “If you read it, you’d think we scripted every-thing from day one to where we are right now.”

Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net.

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