Hey, Cleveland. It's AC - what's happening?

The Cavs are coming off a great three-game run on the West Coast and topped the Knicks on Sunday night when they got home. I don't like seeing the team fall behind and have to come back like they did out West, but in April - all that matters are W's and L's.

But there has been a little bit of a problem with their interior defense. And tonight, we'll find out: have we corrected the problem?

They weren't having this problem a month ago. But since Ben went down, it's really been something they need to solve. Big Ben takes ownership of that paint and I think all the other players follow suit. We miss Ben with second chance opportunities - especially with him and Anderson on the floor together. But on defense, he does not allow open lanes to the basket; he won't allow it. And all shots are contested.

So, naturally, we miss him. But if you're going to win a Championship, you still have to get by on the short term without some of your players. And we've done that all season. And we'll get that attitude back when he's ready to play.

I'm looking forward to tonight because Orlando has almost caught Boston and they've become a threat to us. We have to play them one more time down in Orlando. So, we want to win this game tonight to even up the score and then, hopefully, go down there and beat them.

The Magic have had a lot of success against the Cavs. It's their inside play; they have a perfect balance. They have the inside game and the outside game. You can't give them both.

You have to shut down either the inside game or the outside game. And the most conventional thinking is that Dwight Howard is not going to beat you by himself - even if he gets 30 and 20. The key is you can't let him do that and the other three guys get 15 or 20. It's tough to beat them like that.

So the Cavaliers might take a page out of the Pistons' book. The Pistons don't double-team Howard unless he's in a situation where you can double-down on him quickly. They just let Rasheed deal with him and dare the other guys to beat them. And that seems to affect the Magic. When they don't hit their outside shots, they're not the same team.

Right now, Orlando's every bit the threat to us that Boston is. We have the mental capability of dealing with the Celtics, but right now, I don't know where we are with Orlando. We're not quite there yet, mentally - as far as how to stop them. We know what we have to do to stop Boston. But we haven't quite figured out Orlando yet.

Hopefully, we'll start tonight. Because now is the time to start ramping ourselves up for Playoff basketball.

You want to give yourself a chance to be able to see what works before you get into the Playoffs. You have to start setting your rotation - tweak your rotation a little bit here and there, which Mike Brown seems to be doing. You want to work on your schematic on the backside of your defense or do some things differently on your in-bounds plays. Now is the time to see how these things work so when you get into the Playoffs you understand every nuance of your team and how you want to attack an opponent.

The Cavaliers haven't been their sharpest of late - most notably on the defensive end. They really have been tired over the last few games. But the thing to remember is two years ago, we would have lost all these games. Last year we would have lost these games - because they would have found an excuse to let them lose the game.

But this Cavaliers team is a no-nonsense, no-excuses team. And they fight through adversity. That's the biggest thing I took from the West Coast trip. They have learned how to fight through adversity. And that's what winning playoff basketball will be all about.