I’m not going to lie, as the time ran out on the Cavs season Saturday night in Orlando, I was near tears. This one hurts and the truth is, I’m heartbroken. I fell in love with this team and now I feel like my dream girl has broken up with me.

Pretty soon reality will kick in and the reality is that this is just basketball, and the Orlando Magic were better than the Cavs. They were deeper and better prepared. They were vastly superior in the paint and they were better coached. Their defense was better for most of the series and they looked like they were having fun most of the time, which indicates a level of confidence far above what the Cavs showed in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Cavs were jumpy and undisciplined. They looked sour and nervous. They were weak inside and ran around like chickens with their heads cut off on defense. They were stagnant on offense and looked intimidated for long stretches. The Cavs, minus LeBron, had no sense of “the moment” and routinely missed potentially momentum-changing shots.

Wait, read that paragraph again. Does that sound anything like the team we watched at The Q all year? What the hell happened? See, now my sadness is giving way to anger. Maybe my dream girl has been cheating on me this whole time! Maybe the girl I fell in love with was really playing me and I’ve been a fool for the last nine months!

Actually, it’s more like I married my dream girl, then right when things seemed like they couldn’t be better she got hit and killed by a blue and white bus with the number 12 on the side.

It’s going to take awhile for me to work through all this and get to “acceptance.” But let’s start by looking at what happened in Game 6. A lot of people, myself included, called for the Cavs to focus on taking away Orlando’s shooters, rather than double-teaming Dwight Howard. I heard Kenny Roda on WKNR say “Let Dwight Howard score 50, who cares?” OK, we got our wish. He didn’t score 50, but he did score 40 and had more offensive boards (6) than the entire Cavs starting lineup. That’s the real killer. Rarely before have I seen the Cavs get so thoroughly out worked on the glass and on loose balls. The Magic got way too many second chances. Plus, the hack-a-Dwight strategy failed miserably in Game 6 as the 60% career free throw shooter made 12 of 16 from the line. I’ve got all kinds of other thoughts about how much the refs let him get away with in the paint and the soft fouls that get called on everyone trying to defend him, not to mention all the foot-shuffling he does. But he seriously dominated the Cavs frontcourt all series and that’s most of the story.

The rest of the story? Two things. First, the Cavs wasted one of the all-time great playoff performances by LeBron James. What else could you ask from the guy? Making a few more free throws, maybe. But that’s it. The only reason his numbers were down in Game 6 was because his legs were finally wearing out. It had nothing to do with Orlando defending him. It had a little to do with Bennett Salvatore’s crew calling Game 6 completely different than the rest of the series, and thus LeBron not getting half the calls he got in Games 1-5. But really, LeBron just ran out of gas and you can’t blame him. He did everything that he could have done to win the series.

The second thing coincides with the first. The Cavs bench was patently awful all series. They sucked. All of them. Ben provided some good defense and Gibson miraculously made some shots in Game 5, but that was absolutely it. Mickael Pietrus, Orlando’s backup shooting guard, outscored the Cavs entire bench in the series. Basically if you ran Pietrus 1 on 5 against the Cavs bench, the French guy wins. And it wasn’t close. All series long the Cavs had no energy, no spark, and no production off the bench. Nothing. Orlando had Pietrus, Gortat, and Anthony Johnson all contributing attitude, energy, and points in every game. The Cavs got some defense and no scoring from Ben, and one quarter of good shooting from Gibson. I said it before and I’ll say it again, if your bench gets outscored by one guy off your opponent’s bench, I don’t care who you are, you lose. Period.

Other than Mo struggling for several games and Z looking like he has one foot in the grave, the Cavs starters played reasonably well for the series. At least on offense. There was very little good defense by anybody in wine and gold, so I won’t even get into that. But look at the offensive numbers from the 4 guys not named LeBron.

Andy shot 56% in the series, slightly better than his regular season FG percentage. He scored 8.7 per game, right on his season average of 8.6. Where he lost out was in rebounds, which were down about 2 rebounds per game. Credit Dwight Howard with that. But Andy’s offensive production, overall, was as good as can be expected.

Z looked old and slow next to Howard, but his shooting percentage was actually only down slightly. Though that did translate into almost 3 fewer points per game, he grabbed almost 2 more rebounds per game than he did in the regular season. What killed Z was timing. When he lined up for a big shot that the Cavs really needed, he bricked it. He took and missed 6 stupid three pointers in the series against the Magic and looked awfully slow all the time. But strictly looking at stats, his offensive production wasn’t far off from what he did in the regular season.

Delonte shot about 45% in the ECF, same as in the regular season. His three point shooting was not as good and he shot poorly from the line. His turnovers were also a problem, as they went way up from the regular season not only for the series against Orlando, but for the entire playoffs. But he also scored about 3 points more per game than he did in the regular season. He also seemed to be the only guy who gave a crap in the fourth quarter of Game 6. If the rest of the team, including LeBron, had matched his drive in that final quarter, maybe they could have had a shot at the comeback. The bottom line with Delonte is that he switches off mentally from time to time. When he’s in attack mode, he is very good, as he showed in this series.

Mo was eviscerated by anyone and everyone until his stellar Game 5 performance. He was very good again in Game 6, though you could argue he didn’t do enough consistently throughout the game to fight back against the Orlando runs. A Mo three pointer in the middle of any of those runs the Magic made could have turned the momentum, but it didn’t happen. Looking at his stats, he shot at a much lower percentage from the floor, from behind the arc, and from the line. Somehow he still ended up scoring half a point more per game in the ECF than he did in the regular season. Mo’s problem was efficiency. He can’t take so many shots to get his points because that equals wasted offensive possessions, especially when the Cavs are getting out rebounded. Specifically looking at his three point shot production, he seems to have reverted in the series to the kind of shooting from long range that he’s had his whole career. That is, he shot 37.5% from behind the arc against Orlando and he’s shot 38.6% for his career. That’s not the Mo we saw in the regular season, but it might be the real Mo. We’ll find out next year.

Altogether, the Cavs starters did in the Eastern Conference Finals about what they did all year long. They were perhaps a bit less efficient, but they weren’t the real problem. The real problem was the bench and Danny Ferry is going to have to address frontcourt depth in the off-season. Especially since Andy and Joe Smith are free agents and Ben Wallace may retire. Do they go get Shaq? Try to get Bosh a year early? Are there any experienced big men in the league who can at least slow down Dwight Howard? Glen Davis and Kendrick Perkins did reasonably well, but I don’t think they’re going anywhere. I also don’t think the Cavs will be able to land a rookie in the draft who is going to get the job done.

But this has to be the concern. The Magic are younger and better than the Celtics and they will, regardless of how the Finals turn out, be back in the hunt next year. The Cavs are a year older and already got their clocks cleaned this year by the Magic. The two teams are very likely going to meet again next year. What can be done now to prepare for that day? Who will improve from this year to next? I’ll keep tabs on it and write about any roster moves as the summer progresses.

For now, thanks to all who have been reading my ramblings this season and stay tuned for more in the future. Go Cavs!