The Cleveland Cavaliers are not a very good basketball team right now. Even after beating Milwaukee on Monday, they’re just .500 since the all-star break and they’ve been three games under .500 since mid-December when they had a 23-8 record.

The isolation: a lost art. Well, not if you ask the Houston Rockets. But the Sixers? Gone are the days of Allen Iverson single handedly willing the Sixers to victory. Now is the time of ball movement. As they have for much of the season, the Sixers lead league in passes made per game with 346.3, 14 more than the next highest team in the Atlanta Hawks.

Lue has handled the job better than most. He doesn’t invite controversy, but he also doesn’t shy away from confrontation. He just does most of that work behind the scenes and out of public view.

For just the second time since the 2014-15 season, the Golden State Warriors have played a six-game stretch and lost four times. It happened once last year during a mini-swoon that ultimately didn’t matter, and it has now happened during the Warriors’ last six games — including, even, a loss to the Sacramento Kings.

Last year, no less an authority than Gregg Popovich called Kawhi Leonard the best basketball player in the world. Most everything Popovich says these days is worth mulling; the Leonard claim was no exception. Upon deep review, Leonard was indeed a contender for the moniker Best Player in the World, along with LeBron James and Kevin Durant, so long as you consider defense to be an important facet of the sport.

The Thunder were up on the Celtics, 98-92, with 25 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The game was in the bag, just hold on to the lead until the final whistle. Sounds easy enough, right?

With 3:17 remaining in the third quarter and his Cavaliers down by seven, LeBron James took a charge on Jakob Poeltl. On the surface, there was nothing special about this play. Basketball players make basketball plays, and taking a charge is as selfless of a basketball play as someone can make.

The New Zealand Breakers of the NBL are throwing their hat in the ring in the hopes of landing LeBron James and their pitch is pretty familiar: