<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The cratering Cleveland Cavaliers need a win in the worst way to even think about playing playoff basketball, a once unimaginable prospect when sanity prevailed in ownership circles here. At the All-Star break, the Cavs were nine games over .500 and had the fourth-best record in the East. They take a 40-40 record into tonight's game, the first time they've been at .500 since mid-November. Even worse, the team with which they are tied, the Nets, owns the tiebreaker edge. And the Nets, by the way, will be in Boston tomorrow night to close the season in a game they might need to win to advance. The Celtics got some good news last night: Indiana's loss to Orlando ensured that Boston will have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.The freefall of the Cavaliers mirrors last year's undoing, when the team dropped 11 of its last 15 and finished one game out of the playoffs behind the vaunted 36-46 Celtics. This year's team has changed owners, changed coaches, changed players and still finds itself living T.S. Eliot's words: April is the cruelest month. Cleveland has lost three straight, six of eight and eight of 11. LeBron James is being milked to the max. He took a Kobe-esque 35 shots in Sunday's 90-87 loss to the Pistons, finishing with 37 points. Over his last eight games, James has sat down for all of 33 minutes. He's shooting a lot, scoring a lot and losing a lot.</div> Peter May says the Celtics almost single handedly control who gets the 8th seed in the East. http://www.boston.com/sports/articles/2005...have_their_say/ That's it for today.
