<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">CLEVELAND ? LeBron James can joke with his teammates, but the Cavaliers superstar also knows how to get his message across. When James hit Donyell Marshall with a great pass under the basket Saturday in Game 1 and the veteran blew the layup, he heard about it. Marshall responded by getting two key offensive rebounds and scoring after both to help Cleveland hold off the Washington Wizards 97-86 in Game 1. "Those guys need to hear it sometimes," James said Monday following practice at Quicken Loans Arena. "They know I'm not putting them down in any way. It's great for me to know the guys on my team can take constructive criticism. I'm going to give it. Me being the leader, I have to." While James is right in saying the Cavaliers are his team, the 21-year-old is still a kid in some ways. That's why he was able to laugh when recalling the assists he didn't get in Game 1 because his teammates missed easy shots. "I told (veteran Zydrunas Ilgaukas), but he said he needed to get some more rebounds, so he missed them on purpose," James said. o o o WHEN BAD IS GOOD: While the Cavaliers probably won't win Game 2 tonight at 7 at The Q if James plays poorly, the third-year pro is not concerned with his individual performance. "There's always areas I can improve on," he said. "But it doesn't matter how bad I play, if we win the ballgame, I'm happy. If I play excellent and we lose, I'm not." o o o GILBERT THE GREAT: Having played with Wizards point guard Gilbert Arenas in Golden State and Washington, Cleveland shooting guard Larry Hughes probably knows his friend's moves as well as anyone. Hughes, who helped hold Arenas to nine points on 4-of-13 shooting through the first three periods of Game 1, said he will open Game 2 attempting to prevent the 6-foot-4, 210-pounder from getting open shots on the perimeter. "You try to make him drive the ball more," Hughes said. "That way, you have your teammates back there to help you. You give him one thing to do, not two things to do." The reasoning behind that strategy is sound, but Hughes knows there's no guarantee it will work. "He plays the same way every night," he said of Arenas. "Some nights, he gets into that rhythm. You can't stop him once he gets going." o o o FLIPPER: One of the reasons the Cavaliers played so well to close the regular season was Flip Murray, acquired in a Feb. 23 trade with Seattle for seldom-used point guard Mike Wilks. Murray will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season, and the Cavaliers will probably have to offer the shooting guard a deal that starts at their mid-level exception, which will be a shade over $5 million, in order to have any chance of keeping him. "We'll let the season unfold, then we'll sit down and talk with him," general manager Danny Ferry said. "Hopefully, we can work something out." o o o LET IT SNOW: Cavaliers point guard Eric Snow, who often doesn't score 14 points in a week, had that many in Game 1, but James doesn't expect a repeat performance in Game 2. "I don't expect E-Snow to average 16, 15 points," he said. "It would be great if he did, but he's going to help us in other ways no matter what." </div> Source
