Big one tonight at Philips folks, for a number of reasons. Obviously the fans will be out tonight to see LeBron (again, please remember, like Happy Fun Ball, he is not to be taunted). The Cavs, after playing fairly mediocre basketball for the first month or so of the season (due in part to LeBron's finger injury), have picked it up of late, winning four straight games beginning with last Wednesday's 98-94 win over the Hawks in Cleveland.

In Breaking Down The Cavs today, Hawks assistant Bob Bender talked about the need to keep Cleveland off the boards. I definitely think that will be the key to victory tonight. The Cavs don't have a lot of scorers outside of James and maybe Daniel Gibson, but they get lots of points off putbacks and second chances. If the Hawks can win the rebounding battle tonight (especially on the defensive glass), then I like their chances.

Sekou Smith talked about this yesterday in the BasketBlog podcast, and I've been thinking about it today. As Hawks fans, we are emotionally attached to every game. When we win we get excited, and when we lose we think the world is collapsing (Lang Whitaker touched on this today in his column as well). But to really judge this team, you have to keep emotions out of it and just look at the facts; i.e., keep the big picture in mind.

Here are the facts. The Hawks, even though they've lost four straight, are 15-16, which is a pretty nice improvement over a 10-21 record they had at the same point a year ago. This team is better than they've been in several years, and there is much to be excited about. I fully expect them to be in the hunt for the playoffs. But there are going to be stretches like the one they are in now where they puzzle us just as there will be periods where the team looks like world beaters. Hopefully, the latter will happen more often than the former, but in the meantime, we just need to all keep perspective.

With that said, a win tonight is fairly crucial, not only to break out of the four-game slide, but to get a win over a team that stands directly in our path of obtaining a playoff berth. We nearly got one up in Cleveland, but a lack of execution down the stretch plus LeBron going postal led to a defeat. Hey, it happens.

I say, look for Joe Johnson to snap out of his recent shooting funk and lead the team back to .500 with a win tonight.

See you there!