Let's be up front: Cavs can't win NBA title

Careful, Cleveland. Your Cavaliers are riding high, which means you're riding high, and that's fine as long as you ride high with one realization:

Your team isn't winning the NBA title. Not this year.

Anderson Varejao as a backup power forward? Title material. As a starter? No. (Getty Images)

So keep that in mind, or at least keep that possibility in mind, as your Cavs continue to destroy the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Have your confidence. Enjoy this ride. But understand that there are certain things you cannot say, certain ways you cannot act, unless you have the best team in basketball. And you do not.

• Series: Cavaliers 3, Hawks 0

So don't let your alligator mouth overload your hummingbird ass.

Because the Cavaliers, as good as they are -- and they won 66 games this season, scorched Detroit in the first round of the playoffs, and are scorching Atlanta in the second round -- are not good enough to win the NBA title.

And I like Cleveland. Because I love LeBron James. He's my favorite athlete in sports -- I'm allowed to have one, right? -- but I don't like his team. Not as an NBA champion. That's an insult to the champions who came before, none of which had a frontcourt as pathetic as Cleveland's.

Here's a list of NBA champions. Try to find a team that was good enough to win an NBA title yet was bad enough to start players like Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao at center and power forward. You can't. Don't bother.

Most NBA champions have had someone like Shaquille O'Neal or Tim Duncan -- sometimes with David Robinson -- or Hakeem Olajuwon or the combination of Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace. Going back a little farther, NBA champions had big men like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (and James Worthy) or Robert Parish-Kevin McHale-Larry Bird or Moses Malone. Or even Jack Sikma. Wes Unseld. Bill Walton.

Since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976, the only exception to my Big Man Theory is the Chicago Bulls dynasty of Michael Jordan, and Cleveland fans are probably clinging to that exception like a drunk clinging to a barstool. Well, forget it. Sober up.

I'll give you this, that LeBron James is as good as Michael Jordan. Seriously. He is.

But Cleveland has no Scottie Pippen.

Hell, Cleveland doesn't even have 6-foot-10 Horace Grant, who was good for a double-double. And clearly Cleveland doesn't have Dennis Rodman, who was built like Wally Szczerbiak but averaged a Kareem-like 15.5 rebounds per game when the Bulls were winning titles from 1996-98.

So what I'm saying is this: If Cleveland is going to win an NBA title this season, with this roster, it will have to do something that has never been done: Win an NBA title without a great frontcourt, and without a great supporting cast for its superstar.

Hell, maybe LeBron is that good. Honestly, I wouldn't mind it. Wouldn't even mind being wrong about this particular column. I don't want LeBron to make the clichéd leap from small-market Ohio to New York. I live in Ohio, too, and I want him to stay -- but he has to think he can win it all to stay. Winning it all this season, one year before he becomes a free agent, surely would convince him to re-sign with the Cavaliers.

But this team has a major flaw, one that general manager Danny Ferry hasn't corrected. He did fabulous work to acquire Mo Williams, Delonte West and Szczerbiak to play alongside James, and the result was 66 wins. Only 12 teams have won 66 games in the regular season, and since the NBA-ABA merger only one failed to win the title: Dallas, in 2006-07. Guess what that Dallas team didn't have? A great frontcourt. Dirk Nowitzki is 7-0 and brilliant, but the Mavs' inside players were Erick Dampier and DeSagana Diop. And you don't win an NBA title with Erick Dampier and DeSagana Diop.

Nor do you win one with Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao. No, I take that back. A team could very well win an NBA title with Ilgauskas and Varejao, but only if they're coming off the bench. If those guys are your backups at center and power forward, you have a formidable team. If they're the best you've got? Yuck. Ilgauskas is 7-3 and still plays below the rim, lacking the fast-twitch muscles to do anything but spot up and shoot. Varejao has muscle and effort but no skill. Backups Joe Smith and Ben Wallace? They're done. Their gas tanks are empty. This isn't 2004.

And this isn't conjecture, people. This is fact. Look who's left in the East: Orlando and Boston. And look who has been most likely to come out of the West: the Lakers or Rockets. All four of those teams have, or had, great size. Orlando has Dwight Howard, Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis. Boston had Kevin Garnett, plus some Ilgauskas-and-Varejao pieces like Kendrick Perkins, Glen Davis and Leon Powe. Houston: 7-6 Yao Ming. The Lakers: Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom.

Cleveland played those four teams, when those teams were at full strength, a total of 10 times this season.

And lost seven.

Think about it. Against everyone else in the NBA, including the playoffs, Cleveland is 73-9.

Against Boston, Orlando, Los Angeles and Houston -- arguably, teams with the NBA's best four frontcourts -- Cleveland is 3-7.

Cleveland has caught a break in two of those cases. Garnett (knee) is out for Boston, and Ming (foot) is done in Houston. But that still leaves Orlando and Los Angeles. In five games this season, Cleveland went 1-4 against the Magic and the Lakers.

And those are the teams between Cleveland and an NBA title.

Hey, Cavs fan: Don't hate me because I'm right.