2. It seems to be open hunting season on the league’s best player. Now the question remains: Who on his team will do something about it?
3. In a vacuum, the flagrant foul on James in this pivotal Eastern Conference swing game wouldn’t have been of great significance. But since it came three days after James Harden kicked the royal jewels, an alarming pattern is perhaps developing on both sides: teams going after James and no one on the Cavs doing anything about it.
4. Harden’s punishment was a flagrant-1 and ultimately a one-game suspension. Valanciunas’ foul doesn’t rise near the level of a suspension, but no one retaliated in defense of the league’s best player.
5. Part of the problem was the Cavs’ smaller lineup. With Timofey Mozgov on the bench and Kendrick Perkins out of the rotation entirely, Tristan Thompson was the only big on the floor at the time of the foul. Still, sooner or later the Cavs have to deliver a fastball to the opponents’ ribs.
6. “There’s a difference between a hard foul and a dirty play. Obviously that was a dirty play,” said Kendrick Perkins, the league’s resident savant on hard fouls. “We don’t have time for that type of s---.”
7. Perkins is out of the rotation because he’s not as good as the guys playing ahead of him. David Blatt is not going to juggle a rotation that is obviously working very well right now just so Perk can go thump someone. But it might eventually come to that.
8. “There’s a time and place you can get one off,” Perkins said when asked if it’s time to throw an elbow back at someone. “You just have to make sure it’s the right time. But at the end of the day you just try and go out there and play basketball. It’s a physical game and obviously (Valanciunas) was trying to send a message because he’d been getting beat out there in pick-and-rolls. But it’s just bull----. It ain’t cool.”
9. Blatt wouldn’t touch the topic. “I’m not going to answer that question,” he said when I asked if he believes in retaliation for hard fouls. “That’s a dangerous question. It’s not a question I’m going to answer.”
10. Valanciunas denied intent, just as Harden did on Sunday. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him,” Valanciunas said. “I was just trying to stop him from dunking the ball and I was protecting the rim and that’s it. I was just doing my job, protecting the rim, and it doesn’t matter how. I wasn’t trying to get anyone’s attention. An easy foul is not going to work on that player.”
11. Valanciunas raises a fair point. James is powerful enough to burst through most arm fouls when opponents are trying to stop him from getting to the rim – he did it again Tuesday against the Celtics. So where is the line between hard foul and dirty play?
12. James is used to all this. Teams have been coming at him for years. The Bulls’ Kirk Hinrich tackled him in a game two years ago to prevent a dunk, just one of countless hard fouls James has endured throughout his 12 years.
13. “I don’t want to get too much involved in it because I don’t want to cry about it,” James said. “There’s a lot of plays that just aren’t basketball plays. But the referees take care of it and decide what it is or not, that’s what we’ve got rules for. I have to maintain my focus and understand how important the game is but at the same time protect myself as well.”
14. James didn’t seem to mind that no one came to his defense tonight, but for someone so concerned with team building moments and developing camaraderie, watching one of his teammates drop the hammer on someone (should it happen to James again) would sure seem to go a long way toward that chemistry.
15. “You have to understand the game is more important than trying to deliver a hard foul,” James said. “At that point we all know everyone is looking for the reaction. It’s the old elementary school house rule that the second guy always gets caught. So you just relax and play the game.”