Greatest Cavs team ever?!

They have coasted through large portions of this season. They have frustrated us with breakdowns in fundamentals, specifically free throw shooting. But with an Eastern Conference Finals berth just one win away, this Cavalier team has to be grouped in the conversation of the greatest teams in Cavalier history.

True, how exciting it is to be considered the greatest team of a franchise that has yet to even appear in an NBA Finals series is debatable, it is still a history that spans 37 years.

Only two other Cavalier squads have appeared in the Eastern Conference Finals; the 1976 and 1992 teams.

Both teams lost in six games.

You may remember 1976 as the "Miracle of Richfield" team. Despite the monniker, that squad finished 49-33 and won just one series to get to the Eastern Finals. The '92 team featured the Mark Price/Brad Daugherty/Larry Nance trio and finished 57-25. They defeated the New Jersey Nets 3-1 in the first round and the Boston Celtics 4-3 in the second.

As of now, I would still put the '92 team far ahead of this years Cavs. If not for Michael Jordan, that was surely an NBA Finals team and maybe a league champion. Should LeBron's boys find a way to get passed the mighty Pistons, I will reconsider my stance.

-- I'm not very happy with the Indians right now.
I'm not sure if Mark Shapiro goes to the nearest cave to hibernate once the season starts, but there are some GLARING personnel moves that NEED to be made before the Tigers completely run away with the Central

1. Sowers needs to be starting for Buffalo, like yesterday. He clearly is NOT ready for the big time and now is having trouble even giving the Tribe 5 innings. Carmona is light years better than Jeremy right now and deserves to be in the rotation even after Jake Westbrook comes off the disabled list.

2. We need bullpen help bad. Go get Brad Lidge by any means necessary. Joe Borowski is absolutely BRUTAL. And if you think he won't be serving up moon shots well into September if we let him, you are sorely mistaken. I can't think of any other closer in the history of basebal that was effective topping out at 88 MPH.

3. Quit fooling around with the Michaels/Dellucci platoon and just bring up Choo and start him in left the rest of the year. Trust me on this one! The guy has a cannon arm, good glove and will hit you .280. I still haven't figured out why Choo didn't make the roster coming out of Spring Training. Michaels does nothing exceptional and Dellucci cannot hit with runners in scoring position to save his life.

These moves seem like common sense to me. I think baseball general managers are worse than their counterparts in the other major sports when it comes to shying away from the obvious move.

Crucial series with the Twins coming up. Winning or sweeping the series will get the Tribe right back on track in the division. Losing the series could start a May freefall that could lead to a lot of meaningless games in August and September, and those are never fun.

16-8?!!

Nobody can say the 2007 Indians aren't resilient.

Most years, having an entire four-game home series rain/snowed out, playing a subsequent "home" series in Milwaukee, and getting swept in New York in a game in which our closer melted down and surrendered six runs in the ninth, would be a recipe for another disasterous April.

But something strange happened this year. The Indians did the exact opposite what they would have done every other season.

Rather than shrinking in the face of adversity, they have thrived. Rather than allowing our divisional rivals to take advantage and bury us early, they have gone 6-2 against the A.L. Central so far. Instead of getting pummeled every fifth day when injured Cliff Lee's spot in the rotation came up, they plugged in an inspiring Fausto Carmona, who promptly proved he is major league-ready.

I'm not going to make any prophetic statements about this year's Tribe. I'm not going to say things are different. We still have a lot of issues on this club.

1. Despite having Fernando Cabrera and Rafael Betancourt in the bullpen, they are using a washed up, PAINFUL to watch Roberto Hernandez in the setup role.

2. Josh Barfield, the man they dealt hot prospect Kevin Kousmanoff for, has not shown much of anything at the plate, failing to hit his body weight most of the season.

3. Andy Marte has been a complete disaster at third base, swinging for the fences at each plate appearance a la Russell Branyan. He made up for it by booting balls all over the infield (four errors already) before mercifully taking a trip to the disabled list.

a few months from now, we could easily be saying things like, "The Indians are just 30-45 since their 16-8 start."

But for now, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

If the Larry Dolan era has taught us anything, its not to take anything for granted. Teams built on cheap budgets need a lot of breaks over the course of the season to make a serious playoff run. The Tigers, Twins and White Sox are all going to win an awful lot of baseball games this year.

I guess what I'm saying is, don't be surprised if this Indians team goes the way of countless Cleveland teams before it and the wheels come flying off the wagon at some point. But another month of baseball like they played in April and things might start to get really exciting around this town for a reason other than LeBron James.