Who'd a thunk it. Orlando gets three on the road and moves to 5-1. Rashard Lewis scored 20 or more each game, Dwight Howard has turned into a scorer, and Hedo Turkoglu has been solid. And the best team in Florida now is...the Orlando Magic.

The Heat are cold (0-5) and the Wizards are casting spells on nobody. Dwayne Wade is about ready to come back to Miami and not a moment too soon. Stat line of the week-Shaq gets 3, count em' 3, rebounds against Francisco Elson of the Spurs. The Wizards lost to the Nuggets and Nets, proving they will only have trouble with two types of teams this year. The ones that run and the ones that don't.

Celtics are 4-0, rest of league is green with envy. Two straight 20+ victories at home. Even slowed down the Nuggets, holding them under 100 points. What's next? The Bruins in the Stanley Cup?

Just when you think it's all figured out. The Bulls beat the Pistons on national TV. The shame is that Rasheed Wallace got 36 and few people noticed. It looks like Wallace finally understands how good he can be and wants to be that good. As for the Bulls, they STILL need Kobe. Pull the trigger, do the deal, flip the switch. Just do it.

Texas 14, the rest of the league 3. Rockets, Spurs, Mavericks all with just one loss each. The tell on the Rockets-you don't go into the 4th quarter (against Dallas) down 2 and lose by 9. Then again, Yao Ming may be the world's tallest magician. Against the Spurs, he made Duncan (14 points) disappear. The Mavs got past the ghost of playoffs past against Golden State, and the Spurs won the games they should.

Utah leads their division. Who cares? Let's talk about the Nuggets three game losing streak. People wondered how Iverson and Anthony would coexist. They're both fine. They get 25 shots a game and the rest of the team gets to watch.

What kind of world are we living in? The Clippers are 4-1. Of course, the bubble had to burst and it did against Detroit in a big way 103-79. The Pistons kicked the Clips hard in the first half and held Chris Kaman (who leads the league in rebounding) off the boards.

The Lakers have won 3 of 4. Kobe Bryant has elevated to another level, which is good. He still wants out, which is bad. So, is he playing to get out? If he doesn't get out does this level of play go away? I'm thinking the Lakers keep Bryant because the average price of a ticket to see them is $89. You don't get away with charging that without a marquee attraction.

Finally, LeBron James. Tonight a star. Tomorrow an average looking player. The next day a mega star. After that a very good player. 82 games and you get 20 for each of the 4 LeBron James'. The encouraging thing is he has gotten to the line 10 or more times in 3 of 6 games. Then again, he also has games where the floor swallows him up. LeBron is LeBron, but he's not Kobe. Not yet.

Is this any way to treat an international icon? Ten points on 11 shots and not a single free throw attempt. This is what I got HD TV for?

Now, LeBron James doesn't owe me for the TV. I didn't buy a Sony just to watch "King" James. But it would have been nice of him to at least show up for my first playoff game with the new set. I adjusted the contrast, experimented with the colors, but somehow I couldn't see him. Not in the open court, not in the paint, and especially not at the foul line. Obviously the set is defective. After all, a 6'8" 26 point a game scorer doesn't just disappear into 40 inches worth of pixels. Right?

Wrong. For 45 minutes James became the NBA's version of the cheshire cat minus the smile. As he said before the game, you take what they give you. Evidently Detroit was not a charitable mood.

So what happened?

It's easy to blame James, but save a pointed finger for Cavs coach Mike Brown. Brown learned playoff basketball from Rick Carlisle, and maybe that's the problem. The Pacers had talent but they didn't have an open court player like James. Nobody does. Which makes the Cavs fixation with the half court offense somewhat puzzling.

It wasn't that Detroit controlled the boards. Cleveland outrebounded the Pistons 49-41. It wasn't that Cleveland tried to run and couldn't. They simply didn't make the attempt. The most telling stat of the night is this one: 16 assists for Cleveland. You don't get assists from a standing start, which is where Brown's offense spent most of the night.

Basketball is played in 3D. Played well it almost goes beyond to some uncharted area. Last night the Pistons turned off the high definition talent of the Cavs superstar and made the game black and white. 2D at most.

You give the Pistons their due, but still you wonder. Was the reason Cleveland played into Detroit's hands simply a matter of a self-fulfilling prophesy? Not so much that Cleveland can't beat Detroit, but that they don't believe they can. Faced with a tough opponent , the Cavaliers can either get tough or get gone. Last night they looked satisfied with just being in the game at the end. If Cleveland played like a team without heart, where was the leadership to give it to them? Not on the bench with the coach, not on the floor with LeBron James.

James has yet to learn what Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Larry Bird knew instinctively. It's not so much what you do when you go up with the ball. It's what you do the next play after you're knocked down with it. LeBron James didn't need a couple of seasons of college ball to learn to play, but maybe it's becoming obvious that he needed them to learn how to win.

Is Detroit-San Antonio now inevitable? Not really. If Cleveland is willing to run, willing to make mistakes, willing to exploit the tremendous talents James has in open court then the Cavs can certainly win. But first the team, starting with the coaching staff, has to become more afraid of losing than of the big, bad Pistons. And LeBron James, international icon, has to stop playing hard and play harder. It's the difference between HD and 2D and the difference in winning and "happy to be here".

The NBA.  All the action of crocheting and the excitement of soccer.  I say this after watching argueably the two best teams in the league (Detroit and San Antonio) slog their way to an 85-70 win for the home team in Motor City.

Don't get me wrong.  The NBA has magnificently talented players who can turn into human highlight reels faster than you can say ESPN.  But maybe that's the problem.  Too much focus on the jam and not enough on the hard work that generates open court basketball.  The Knicks and Lakers of the late 60's this is not.  Heck, it isn't even as watchable as a good Kentucky Colonels-Indiana Pacers game from the glory days of the ABA.

For the game both teams barely shot .400.  Put that in some perspective.  Your 45 year old, overweight next door neighbor who is sleeping off a turkey and egg nog overdose on your couch about now can hit .400 if open on the perimeter.  After the game the star being interviewed was Chauncey Billups.  Yes, the Chauncey Billups who went 6-17 and led all scorers with a blistering 20 point performance. 

The sequence that said everything you need to know about the game (and by inferrence the current state of the NBA) was when Brent Barry of the Spurs tried to shake and bake and ended up laying on the floor having faked himself loose from the ball.  The Pistons picked up the loose ball and initiated (insert gasp of excitement) a fast break.  Not just a fast break, but a 4-1 fast break punctuated by a missed dunk.

Let that sink in.  A 4-1 fast break that wasn't converted because a pass might have messed up a dunk opportunity.  By the best team in the league.  With a very good coach in Flip Saunders.  In a key game.  NBA action...it's fantasmic. 

I'm glad I have memories of Jerry West and Oscar Robertson.  That I saw the Larry Bird Celtics constantly moving and cutting to create scoring opportunities.  And even that I saw Bob #### draining three pointers with the regularity of a Swiss timepiece.  For those of you just starting to watch basketball I guess you can cling to the memory of Chauncey Billups scoring 20 points and Tony Parker scoring all 8 of the Spurs first quarter points as his girlfriend, Eva Longoria of "Desparte Housewives" watched from the stands.  As for me, I think I'll turn on Univision and see if there's a soccer game on.