The town got what it thought it wanted

What a difference one quarter of basketball can make?

If some guy named Nachbar doesn't drain three 25-footers, life is a lot different. The Bulls choked in what one writer called their biggest game since Jordan retired the second time. So instead of playing the defending champion Heat and being placed on the same side of the bracket as the Pistons, the Cavs get the supposed easier side playing a depleted Wizards team in the first round.

If they hadn't. All of the national media would be picking the Heat to defeat the Cavs in the first round. I suspect most of the local media as well. Fans would be moaning about all of those close losses to bad teams. Mike Brown would be set to be burned in effigy and LeBron James would hear story after story questioning his late game prowess and how Wade is the true heir to Jordan.

Instead sports radio callers were giddily putting the Cavs already in the Eastern Conference finals to play the Detroit/Chicago/Heat survivor. I heard phrases like "the gods of basketball finally smiled on Cleveland." And that makes me nervous.

Call me nuts but I would have preferred the hard road. LeBron lives for challenges and while the Heat are the defending champions- they are not healthy. And it would be the perfect stage for LeBron to show his ascension to being the best player in the league. And if the Cavs could pull off that win, it would give them the confidence to get past the Pistons much like the Michael's Bulls had to do one day.

That said, the Cavs should sweep Washington and that scares me. An opening game loss and all of this town's ghosts will be on display. When the Cavs beat the Wizards, it won't feel like a victory-- just an accepted result. Instead of every first round game having the intensity of life and death. These games will be purely business-like.

I can't figure out why everyone is dissing the Raptors. I tell you that Toronto scares the crap out of me. Yes they have not won a playoff series but overcoming their lost savior Vince Carter will supply all the confidence they now lack. I would rather play the Nets but for them to beat the Raptors, Richard Jefferson is going to have to get healthy and if he does that -- it makes Jersey dangerous.

I am the only person in town, I suppose who feels this way. The goal is not to make the Eastern Conference finals. The goal is to make the NBA finals and to take our chances against whoever survives the West. I still have confidence that the Cavs can do that. I just believed the harder challenge would have given us our best chance to do that.

Let's hope I was wrong. This is what everyone asked for. Let's get it done then.