At the break.....
Well, that was an interesting half and we all knew LeBron James and DeShawn Stevenson were going to find themselves in the middle of something. Sure enough, James took a hit to the face after driving to the basket against Darius Songaila. They got their arms tangled up and once untangled, Songaila inadvertedly hit James.
Then the usual arguing with officials about the call and thus leads to Stevenson getting a technical foul called on him when he slapped Anderson Varejao's hand away. The fans have been chanting certain phrases that I'm not gonna repeat, but just think of a familiar chant people chant when they don't like a player.
The thing that stuck out more than that was when Stevenson asked for security for fans who were yapping at him close to the Wizards bench. Security came over and calmed them down, but it shouldn't even get that far.
Got to give Stevenson credit, though. The fans are all over him. Booing him everytime he touches the ball or is shown on the jumbo tron, but he's having a solid first half with 11 points and has outscored James, who has 10.
Now who expected that.
Outside of that, it's been pretty much a clean first half. The Wizards have 13 turnovers, yet are still winning. The reason? Cleveland has allowed them to shoot 51.5 percent from the field.
The thing about this game is Washington has had chances to extend the lead, but turned the ball over. So you know the James scoring explosion is coming. When it does, if Cleveland is close, it will win the game. The Cavaliers only shot 40 percent in the first half, yet are only down two points.
A little side note. They do all this fan interaction stuff at the games. Kind of interesting at times. Kind of boring. But they had this couple celebrating a birthday and anniversary. So the mascot, Moondog, comes over and has these two cakes so you think they're for the couple.
Nope.
He takes the cakes and hits two people wearing Wizard jerseys in the face. Now this had to be staged. No way that goes down otherwise.
See you at the buzzer.
-- Duane Rankin