Your Morning Dump... Where Cleveland lost at home again

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here... highlighting the big storyline.  Because there's nothing quite as satisfying a good morning dump.

Riding a three-game winning streak, Cavs coach Mike Brown continued to test some experimental options. This time, the results were simply negative. It played into the hands of the Bulls (3-2), who hardly were masters of execution themselves.

After using their new weapon, Shaquille O'Neal, effectively in Tuesday's victory over the Washington Wizards, the Cavs went back to stumbling. Attempting to work in some new offensive looks, the offense was clunky, especially with O'Neal involved. They used some new offensive sets and none of them seemed to produce results.

Then defensively, the mismatches created by featuring O'Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas together ended up hurting more than helping.

Cleveland.com - Cavaliers test options on offense, but results come back with a loss

With the Celtics enjoying a day off before tonight's game against Phoenix, we turn our attention to the early struggles that have hit the Cleveland Cavaliers.  Last night, they lost to the Bulls at home... their second home loss of the season.  They are now 3-3... 2-2 at home, 1-1 on the road. 

But let's soak it up now because the Cavs have a whole season to figure this out.  The addition of Shaquille O'Neal changes their offense a lot because unlike Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Shaq needs to live 3 feet from the basket.  There's no pick-and-pop with Shaq.  In fact, there's no pick-and-anything with Shaq anymore.  He's too big and too slow now.  And so is the Cavs offense.  LeBron doesn't have the same room to work.  He needs to keep his big guy happy.  And let's not forget the whole Delonte mess which hurt them more than you'd think.

Cleveland is 3-3, and they'll struggle a little more between now and Christmas.  But I say enjoy it now, C's fans... because if they figure things out by December or January... nothing that's going on right now will matter.

After the jump... Page 2, Where Larry and Magic were on Conan

Thanks Jose3030 for the video

I love Conan asking Larry "your goal was to knock out Magic's teeth?"  and Larry saying "I thought they'd look good in my trophy case." 

The rest of the links:

Herald:  Williams answers Celtics role call  |  Suns at Celtics scouting report  |  Globe:  Forward thinking  |  Rondo, Bird and backboards  |  Suns thumbnails  |  ESPN:  Rondo shines against Suns  |  Don't doubt Baby's football skills  |  Camerato: Grousbeck refutes claims of Celtics financial troubles  |  Lex: Not a bad first 6 games for the Beast  |  Celtics Hub:  Early extremes, what will last, what won't