After playing in six straight Finals, LeBron James says there's no such thing as a "big" regular-season game. Such trivial matters like the East's No. 1 seed could never possibly matter to the King.Then the ball tipped, and the four-time MVP sent a loud and clear message.James scored 36 points and Kevin Love added a double-double as the Cleveland Cavaliers blitzed the Celtics, 114-91, in Boston on Wednesday to take the driver's seat for the Eastern Conference's top seed.Cleveland now holds a one-game lead and the head-to-head tiebreaker with four games remaining in the season. Each of the Cavaliers' remaining games come against teams in the playoffs or currently in the hunt.All five Cavs starters scored in double figures, and they led by as many as 29 points. The game was so lopsided that even by halftime pundits, including Nick Wright of Fox Sports, were ready to deride the LeBron detractors:This indeed felt like a message from the two-time defending Eastern Conference champion Cavaliers, who have spent much of the last two months struggling. The Los Angeles Lakers were the only team with a worse defense during the month of March, and it seemed like the Cavs were descending toward the pack of hungry contenders.The Celtics, Toronto Raptors and Washington Wizards have all fashioned themselves as Cleveland killers in one way or another. What became abundantly clear Wednesday night is that all three teams are still going to have an uphill battle to have any chance of beating this squad in a seven-game series.The Cavs, seemingly just to prove they can, locked Boston down defensively. The Celtics' uptempo offense failed to score 100 points for the first time in eight games; they'd scored at least 109 in six of their last seven coming into Wednesday. They hit 40.7 percent of their shots overall, including a ghastly 7-of-33 rate from three.Social media was understandably a little bemused by the Cavs' defensive struggles suddenly vanishing:The defensive improvement was all the more surprising with the absence of Tristan Thompson, their defensive anchor who is currently being evaluated for a sprained thumb. Thompson will also miss Friday night's game against the Atlanta Hawks before being re-evaluated.Aside from James, who finished with 36 points, 10 rebounds and six assists, there weren't any spectacular individual performances from Cleveland.Kyrie Irving finished with 19 points and five assists, while Love had 15 points and 16 rebounds. Neither player shot well, with Irving going 7-of-18 from the floor and Love 5-of-15.J.R. Smith (12 points) and Channing Frye (10 points) rounded out the double-figure scorers for Cleveland. James and Smith were the only starters to make at least half of their shots.The Celtics were led by a 26-point effort from Isaiah Thomas. Jae Crowder (13 points), Al Horford (12 points) and Kelly Olynyk (12 points) were also in double figures for Boston.The Celtics play the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday night in the second game of a back-to-back. Atlanta will then travel to Cleveland the next day for a matchup against the Cavs.Postgame ReactionLeBron discussed his performance with reporters: "Just trying to get our team right going down the stretch brings out the best in me. We knew we were coming to a hostile building tonight and just wanted to try and play our game ... and we did that."He was unsure of whether this was a turning point: "Only time will tell. But we played Cavs basketball tonight and when we do that we're a pretty good team. So we've got four more games left and we can see how we can finish the season off."Celtics coach Brad Stevens discussed his team's disappointing performance: "I thought they were better, quicker to the ball, you name itthey were quicker in every category, and made it really tough on us. We didn't match them."Thomas was also displeased: "We laid an egg tonight. There's no way around that. We didn't take advantage of the opportunity that we had tonight."
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