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It's funny how these playoffs have gone. Hornets vs. Mavericks was a coming out party for Chris Paul. Lakers vs. Nuggets was a show of Laker dominance. Spurs vs. Suns was the epitaph of a great notion.

And Cavaliers vs. Wizards? It's a cat fight at a rap concert. Even if you wanted to follow all the ups and downs of this thing, it would be a full-time job.

Here is some of the latest:

• Michael Lee of the Washington Post has some news: "[LeBron] James didn't receive any penalty during the game, but I was just told that he was given a flagrant foul prior to Game 2. James claimed that he didn't intentionally hit Blatche in the face but apparently the league wasn't buying it. The news doesn't help the Wizards much, especially since they couldn't turn the flagrant into extra points in the critical first game of this series. But for an update: This series has now had six technical fouls, three flagrant one penalty fouls, one flagrant two penalty foul, one ejection, a $25,000 fine for a 'menacing gesture' by Stevenson and a hip-hop feud. Wizards center Brendan Haywood has been the most chippy player in this playoffs, with one flagrant two foul, two technicals and an ejection. The other flagrants in this series belong to James, Anderson Varejao and Stevenson. James, Antawn Jamison, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Gilbert Arenas and Daniel Gibson have received the other technicals."
• Dan Steinberg of the D.C. Sports Bog has images of DeShawn Steveson arriving at the hotel in Cleveland in, of all things, a Michael Vick jersey. That seems to cap a pretty amazing month of making himself hatable. Steinberg imagines life as DeShawn: "Hmm, this month has worked out pretty well. I've gone from being a fairly obscure shooting guard--perhaps best-known for my back tattoo featuring my name and uniform number adorned with dollar signs and bullet holes--to a national sports figure with a sizzling beef against one of the NBA's best players and one of hip-hop's biggest stars, backed only by a teenage anthem creator and a little-known D.C. rapper. I've thrown an off-the-wall '80s-themed birthday party, received write-ups on the sites of The New Republic, New York Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, found my way onto a list of the five hardest foulers of the postseason, slashed my neck on national television, earned a $25,000 fine for being menacing, promised to boycott a club and become one of the most hated and scorned figures in Cleveland sports. Cool!"
• Wolf Blitzer is a huge Wizards fan, but in an interview with ESPN the Magazine's Ted Bauer, he disagrees with DeShawn Stevenson on one key point: "All I can say is, LeBron James isn't overrated."
• Brian Windhorst of the Akron Beacon-Journal quotes Brendan Haywood: Brendan Haywood to the media today after hearing LeBron James' quote that the Wizards were trying to hurt him: "C'mon man, this is the playoffs. He wears 23 and he wants to be Michael Jordan. I respect that because he's a great player. But look what Mike went through. Mike got fouled way worse than this. You know what I'm saying? Nobody is trying to hurt him. Everybody is trying to play basketball, trying to win, trying to play tough. Leave it alone." Then an astute commenter on that same post dug up a story in which Michael Jordan once complained of the exact same thing James is complaining about.

OK, so that was a nice little roundup of the war of words in the media.

But have you noticed what's missing? Talk of basketball. On that front, I see two major themes to this series:

• Can we agree that LeBron James is remarkable? His team is up 3-1. They had been a very mediocre team all year, and the roster has a lot of flaws and has not done anything remotely close to "clicking." Meanwhile, the Wizards have been playing at a high level, and were a popular pick to win the series. (In the poll of the statistical experts known as the TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown, only my mom thought the Cavaliers might win in five, which could happen tonight.) Last year, he was murdered in the media for passing up a clutch shot to Donyell Marshall, who missed. This year, James has established himself as one of the great crunch time scorers in the NBA, yet he made the same play to Delonte West, who did not miss. Credit James with making the right play both times.
• In big play situations of Game 4, three times Washington coach Eddie Jordan called for gimpy Gilbert Arenas to shoot, and twice he missed. He is a great crunch time performer himself, but Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison are superstars in their own right, and I have a feeling that the right call in the same situation tonight might involve on of Washington's "other" stars. How will that sit with Arenas? We'll see. UPDATE: How about that? Instead, Gilbert Arenas now says he is done for the season.
  

(Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)