CLEVELAND, Ohio — No one was happier to see Zydrunas Ilgauskas on Tuesday than Anderson Varejao.
Grinning from ear to ear, Varejao bounded over to the mob of reporters at Cleveland Clinic Courts, who asked if he was excited to have Ilgauskas back.
“Yes, I am,” Varejao said. “It was good to see him today. He didn’t practice with us today. But he has been part of this team for a long time, and it was great to have him back.
“It was like when I go back home and see my mom and my dad. It was great to see him this morning.”
Ilgauskas and Varejao have been close since the veteran center took the young power forward under his wing when Varejao arrived as a 22-year-old rookie from Brazil via Spain in fall 2004.
“Z was great to me,” Varejao said. “When I got here, I didn’t speak any English. When we went to Columbus for the preseason, he used to order my food. He used to take me out to dinner and stuff like that. He took me basically as his son. He was great to me. All I can say is, ‘Thank you, thank you’ to him all the time.”
It was quite a turnaround for Ilgauskas, who didn’t speak any English when he arrived as a 21-year-old rookie from Lithuania in spring 1996.
Jackson cut: To make room for Ilgauskas on the roster, the Cavs released second-year forward Darnell Jackson.
“Darnell is a good player who works hard, a good kid, a man, and we’ll miss having him around,” Cavs General Manager Danny Ferry said. “He was great in practice.
“Hopefully, he can get to somewhere where he has an opportunity to play. I think that’s important for the next step of his career. Had we kept him here, the mind-set was he was going to be on the inactive list. That wasn’t necessarily good for him. It wasn’t good for us. Ultimately, that was a big part of the decision.”
Change is good: Cavs coach Mike Brown has had to make numerous changes in his rotation this season, and the return of Ilgauskas forces another one. There will be yet another when Shaquille O’Neal returns from thumb surgery in a month or so.
For now, it looks as if Brown may elect to keep Ilgauskas coming off the bench as he has for most of this season.
“A lot of it’s just going to be on gut feel,” Brown said. “I have written down on paper some different lineups and rotations. Sometime before the game [tonight in New Orleans] I’ll have a feeling what I’m going to go with, and that’s what I’ll do.
“You’ve got to give all the guys in the locker room credit because we have had a lot of changes this year, and I’ve thrown a lot of different guys in the mix at a lot of different times and guys have seemed to respond well.”That’s what’s a positive about this team. Yes, there’s depth. Yes, there’s versatility. But when you do go through change, guys react well to it and keep themselves ready.”
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