West

BOSTON — There was a lot of buzz in Cleveland when the Cavaliers secured Ben Wallace, Joe Smith, and former Celtic Wally Szczerbiak in a three-team, 11-player trade with Chicago and Seattle on Feb. 21.

Cleveland also corralled former Celtic Delonte West in the trade, but his arrival in Cleveland wasn’t hyped up as much.

After all, Wallace had racked up the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times (2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006), Smith was a former No. 1 draft pick out of the University of Maryland (1995), and Szczerbiak, a former No. 6 pick (1999), averaged double-figures in scoring in all nine of his NBA seasons.

West, meanwhile, had only started five games in 35 outings with Seattle where he averaged a pedestrian 6.8 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 3.2 assists in 20.8 minutes per game.

Cleveland coach Mike Brown believed that West wasn’t being given a chance to live up to his potential in Seattle.

He was right. West started all 26 of the regular season games that he played in with Cleveland and averaged 10.3 points on 44 percent shooting with 4.5 assists and 3.7 rebounds in 31 minutes per game.

“I had a good feeling that he was going to start for us,” Brown said. “We liked him when he was here in Boston as a young guy and we thought he had a chance to start for us.”

West’s best game of the regular season came against the Celtics when he scored 20 points with five rebounds on Feb 27.

That wasn’t a big surprise to Boston coach Doc Rivers.

“You know how it goes when a player is traded and then you play them,” Rivers said. “Even if he likes you, he wants to beat you even that much more.”

West has been everything that Cleveland expected and more.

“He’s been great for us,” Brown said. “To ask a young guy to come here with a month-and-a-half to go in the season, coming from a team where they maybe won, I don’t know, 20-something games, whatever it was, and he [missed some games], to ask him to come and learn our offense and run the team and start for us and all of that other stuff, he’s made a quick adjustment and he’s been fun to be around.

“He’s quick. He’s athletic. He’s talented offensively and he’s a bear defensively.”

West struggled last night, however. Boston All-Star Ray Allen, who is bigger than West, was in West’s face everywhere he went.

When Allen wasn’t in West’s face, either Sam Cassell or Rajon Rondo was.

Allen, Cassell and Rajon Rondo limited West to four points on 2-for-10 shooting.

Despite West’s sub-par performance last night, he can be called on to play a big role in the series if the Cavs need him to.

You don’t have to look any further than Cleveland’s Game Four first round series with Washington to know that. West buried the game-winning 3-pointer that gave Cleveland a 100-97 victory.

“He’s very competitive,” Rivers said of his former player, who averaged a career-high 12.2 points per game with the Celtics last season.

“He’s still growing at the point guard position and the thing you know about Delonte, the bigger the game, the more you know he’s going to be there. He’s as competitive of a player that I’ve ever coached and that’s why I liked him.”

Cleveland star LeBron James said that West’s ability to knock down open shots has helped a lot since the trade.

“Anytime you get guys around you that can shoot the ball, it always helps,” James said.

roblee@projo.com