Wednesday NBA: Suns (14-4) at Cavaliers (12-5)

I think it’s fair to say that the Phoenix Suns were caught looking ahead to tonight’s game in Cleveland when they played the Knicks on Tuesday night.

How else to explain how Phoenix lost to a terrible Knicks team by 27 points and failed to scored 100 points for the first time all season? The Suns had won four straight by an average of 21.3 points. It was the first time in NBA history, at least 10 games into a season, that a team with a winning percentage below .200 defeated a team playing over .800 ball by a margin of 20 or more points.

Phoenix did play without key reserve guard Leandro Barbosa, who sprained his left ankle Sunday in Toronto and also will miss Wednesday’s game with the Cavs.

The Suns lead the league in points, field-goal percentage and 3-point field-goal percentage and are second in assists behind catalyst Steve Nash (16.4 points, 12.1 assists per game).

”It’s tough because they’re a high-possession team,” Cavs coach Mike Brown said. ”No matter if you make or miss shots, they’re coming after you. Our biggest thing is we have to get back in transition, but we have to have vision of the basketball.”

Cleveland, which was off Tuesday, is a 7.5-point favorite for tonight’s game on WagerWeb.com. The Cavs, who haven’t played since spanking Dallas on Saturday, are 6-2 at home, which isn’t bad until you consider they lost just twice at home all last regular season.

Of course this will be the first time that Shaquille O’Neal matches up against his former Suns teammates – Shaq played a season-and-a-half in the desert but never really fit in with the Suns’ up-tempo offense. O’Neal has averaged 11.1 points in 11 games with the Cavaliers.

Zydrunas Ilgauskas will play for Cleveland tonight after surprisingly not getting any minutes in Saturday’s win – which also had LeBron James questioning his coach. Brown, who was responsible for holding a healthy Ilgauskas out of a game for the first time in the center’s career, said he wished he would have handled the situation differently on Saturday, but didn’t elaborate. Ilgauskas will break the franchise record for games played when he steps on the court. He currently shares the record of 723 games with Cleveland general manager Danny Ferry.

Phoenix lost both meetings last season against Cleveland. This year, the Cavs are the only Eastern Conference team that is undefeated against the Western Conference (4-0).

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