Cleveland Cavaliers, Central Division Champions

With last night's 99-94 victory over the Pacers, the Cavaliers became the NBA's first team to clinch a playoff spot this year, wrapping up their second-straight Central Division championship. It's a good time to celebrate, but keep the celebration low-key, because the Cavs have a much bigger goal than that. At 54-15, they now have a six-game lead over the Magic for the best record in the Eastern Conference, and a 3 1/2-game lead over the Lakers for the best record in the NBA. And as we've said many times in this space, the home-court advantage that would provide would be huge.

The game was much closer than you'd expect, given the teams' respective records (Indiana is now 22-46). But the Cavaliers were playing the second game of a back-to-back, having beaten the Pistons on Tuesday, and were obviously running out of gas in the fourth quarter. The Pacers cut an 18-point lead to just one, before our hero LeBron James took over. In the last four minutes of the game, LeBron scored six points along with two steals, two blocks and an assist. He simply toyed with the Pacers in the closing moments.

The Cavs have 13 games to go before opening the playoffs against the Eastern Conference's 8-seed, which if the season ended today would be Toronto, against whom the Cavs are 2-1 on the season, including an overtime win north of the border. (And if you think I'm getting ahead of myself by assuming we'll get the 1-seed, consider that coolstandings.com currently considers that a 99.2% possibility.) The top priority right now has to be keeping everybody healthy, followed by holding off the Lakers for the best record.

All LeBron, all the time

The announced attendance for today's game between the Cavaliers and Pacers was 20,562 -- a sellout. But that's the number of tickets sold -- that is NOT the number of people who actually attended the game. Fred Phelps said The Q looked about half-full, and he was sitting there, so that's about 10,000. As I look outside and see the snow pile up nearly above my car tires, I can't help but think that's about 10,000 morons. On the other hand, if you think there aren't 10,000 morons in Cleveland ... I'm going to leave that thought uncompleted. Anyway, you could easily find 10,000 morons in any major city.

Mr. King LeBron was his usual dominant self, winding up with 38 points and 11 rebounds in the 103-95 victory. And Anderson Varejao was an absolute monster. He bounced back from a rather listless performance Thursday against Chicago with a very strong 16-point, 15-board effort. And there were blocked shots a-plenty: LeBron, Ben Wallace, Wally Szczqzxzerbiak and Joe Smith each had two, and Delonte West blocked a three-point attempt by former Cavalier Flip Murray, which was cool.

Not to be a spoil-sport, but the Cavs ran out to a 25-9 lead, and were outscored the rest of the way. We're still short-handed, missing Z, Sasha and Boobie, but we should be able to keep a team like the Pacers from getting back into the game. They had it as close as five (92-87) with just four minutes to go. LeBron hit a three, and it went well from there, but that shouldn't happen.

But hey, a win's a win, and I'll take it.