Next victim: Boston Celtics

The Cavaliers threatened several times to pull away in last night's series clincher against the Bulls. They never did pull away, but it doesn't matter now. The only thing that matters is that they won, the series is over, and the Cavs move on to play the Celtics in round two.

It's unusual to say this after a series-clinching win, but arguably a bigger story than the outcome of the game is LeBron James' right elbow, which he just admitted has been bothering him for weeks, but he's been able to play through it. It apparently hurt so much, he shot his last free throw left-handed, with just seven seconds left in the game and the Cavaliers up by just four. This wasn't Bo Kimble shooting left-handed to honor Hank Gathers (video here) — Bo had practiced shooting left-handed. LeBron hadn't, and he missed his. James claims it's nothing to worry about, but when you've got your right-handed superstar shooting left-handed because of pain in his right arm ... I'm sorry, LeBron, but I'm going to worry about it, at least a little bit.

LeBron did have an MRI on the elbow on Monday, and it came out clean. He's got three days to rest it before the Cavs open their second-round series against Boston at the Q on Saturday. And to be sure, other than that left-handed free throw, it didn't seem like The King was suffering much. He only scored three points in the first half, but did put in 16 in the second half and was one assist away from his second straight triple-double — and he had one of his patented poster-worthy dunks in the third quarter.

Antawn Jamison was arguably the star of this game, putting in 25 points; and Shaquille O'Neal was an absolute monster on the inside, with 14 points and eight rebounds in just 26 minutes.

I do want to mention the officiating again. After the Cavs' close loss in game three, I complained about a couple of fouls that weren't called. After this one, I'm going to mention a couple that were called, and this time, I'm throwing a bone to the other team. Bulls center Brad Miller got called for two fouls in less than a minute in the fourth quarter while guarding Shaq, and I didn't think either one should have been called. They were Miller's fourth and fifth fouls in the game, and he would go on to foul out in just 10 minutes of game time. After Miller came out following that fifth foul, Joakim Noah got called for a ticky-tack foul on Shaq, and it was his fifth foul too. Give the Cavs credit for getting the ball to Shaq when the officials were calling it so tight, but I'd rather have defeated the Bulls without any help from the referees.

Regardless, it's over with, and the Celtics are waiting to face us on Saturday. I'm going to assume LeBron is healthy enough to dominate, in which case, Boston doesn't stand a chance. Bring 'em on.