National Basketball Association

Cavs return home to face Magic after trying James in post

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 6:15 p.m. ET

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The Cleveland Cavaliers debuted a new lineup on Friday night that might come in handy later in the season.

With Channing Frye excused from the team after the death of his mother, coach Tyronn Lue used LeBron James at center in the Cavs' 94-91 win at the Toronto Raptors.

James has played in the post more and more later in his career, but usually it's at power forward. It's unusual to see him at center, but Lue wanted to see what it looked like -- and he did it without practicing.

"We had to try something different and I wanted to take a look at it," Lue said. "We could've played Bird (Chris Andersen) or James Jones, but it's something I wanted to look at.

"I give the team credit. We hadn't worked on it. It kind of had us in disarray a little bit, but we've just got to figure it out. I thought our guys did a good job of figuring out what we wanted to run and did a pretty good job with it."

The Cavs might have plenty more chances to experiment Saturday when they host the Orlando Magic, a team they have beaten in each of the last 14 meetings. Orlando hasn't beaten the Cavs since 2012 -- Dwight Howard's last season there. The Cavs beat the Magic by an average of 21 points in sweeping the series. Orlando is 12-30 on the road since the start of the 2014-15 season.

The Magic are off to an atrocious start defensively, allowing opponents to shoot 50 percent from the field through the first two games. The Detroit Pistons hammered Orlando 108-82 on Friday night, thanks in part to outscoring the Magic 30-9 in the second quarter.

"The guys talked at halftime and we tried to band together rather than separate and crack ... but it wasn't much better in the second half," Magic coach Frank Vogel said. "It's early; it's game two. We'll get better."

Bismack Biyombo is expected to be a big piece to that improvement. Biyombo made his season debut Friday and is expected to fill the middle of the defense after signing a four-year deal during the summer that could be worth $72 million. Biyombo gave the Cavs fits defensively last season during their Eastern Conference finals victory over Biyombo's former team, the Toronto Raptors.

"He's a middle linebacker defensively," Vogel told the Orlando Sentinel. "He's a guy that's not just doing his job. He's making sure everybody is doing their job.

"He's a great communicator, forceful with his voice. He's a vet. He's been around. He's seen all the coverages and how to guard certain stuff. He's going to really, really enhance our defense."

The Cavs haven't shot the ball as well as expected thus far and they struggled with turnovers in Friday's win, but Richard Jefferson believes this version is better than the team that won the championship last season.

"Shump and Ky (Iman Shumpert and Kyrie Irving) missed the first 30 games (last) season," Jefferson said. "Overall, with the health to start the season, and the additions that we have ... we won 57 games last year with two key guys missing 60 games (combined)."