Mike Celizic

Pity the poor Cleveland Cavaliers. All they’ve done is win every one of the eight playoff games they’ve played by double digits — something no NBA team has ever done — and what do they get for their troubles? A bunch of people bloviating about how maybe it would be better for them if they lose a game.

You’re going to start hearing that line of non-thinking any day now, if you haven’t already. It’s the standard fall-back position for commentators everywhere whenever a team makes winning look too easy.

And for the first two series of this postseason, the Cavaliers have made winning look as easy as brushing their teeth. Eight games, eight wins. They’re playing like the 76ers of 1983, when Moses Malone so eloquently explained his team’s playoff goal: “Fo, fo, fo.” That was when just three series led to the championship. Today, it’s fo, fo, fo, fo. No fis or fums need apply.

As things worked out, the 76ers played four, five, four, going 12-1 on the way to Dr. J’s only NBA title. But no one suggested they needed to lose a game to refocus themselves or somehow ensure victory.

Nor did anyone on the 2001 Lakers cite that team’s one loss in a 15-1 postseason as the reason Los Angeles ultimately stormed to a title. The only thing the Lakers’ one loss and the Sixers’ loss in their near-perfect runs proved was that the other teams are trying to win, too, and sometimes they accomplish that.

Still, the idea that teams that win too easily and too often could be in danger of collapsing once the pressure mounts refuses to die. There’s a certain specious logic to it. It goes like this: Sooner or later, every team gets challenged in a championship run. And if a team has had too easy a time of it, it won’t be prepared to meet that challenge.

Slideshow   NBA playoffs Take a look at photos from the playoffs, including the Magic finishing off LeBron and the Cavs in Game 6. more photos

It sounds so good, but it’s so utterly wrong. Nobody ever said losing builds character after winning. That’s a line you use to find something good about a loss. If losing were such a valuable life experience, every team would give the entire starting unit the day off once in a while — just so that the team can benefit from the salubrious effects of a good thumping.

I’m not suggesting the Cavaliers will go 16-0 in these playoffs. It is possible but unlikely; possible because neither the Celtics nor the Magic have shown that they can sustain excellence in every game of a long series, unlikely because both Boston and Orlando have shown that they can play at an extremely high level — when the stars and planets are aligned just right.

If you’ve watched much of the Cavs so far, though, you don’t get the feeling that losing a game will do anything other than anger LeBron James, who shows every night why he’s the NBA’s 2009 MVP.

Cleveland isn’t a great basketball team — not yet. They have King James, the greatest example of power, speed and all-court skills the game has ever seen. But they do not have a second great player to complement him. What they have is a great mix of youth and experience, size and quickness. Mo Williams and Delonte West are an excellent guard combination, either one of whom can play point and both of whom combined for 29 points a game during the season. Zydrunas Ilgauskas is fragile, but he’s a big man with excellent shooting range and superior ball-handling skills who also rebounds. Anderson Varejao provides enormous energy and great offensive rebounds at power forward. And James does whatever the heck he wants to do.

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