Written by Brian McPeek

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If the state of the union was as solid as the state of the Cavaliers we'd all be living in Shangri-La. 

The Cavs, with LeBron James resting for the entire 4^th quarter, won their sixth straight game Wednesday night by disposing of the Minnesota Timberwolves 109-95. You can forgive LBJ his slothfulness Wednesday evening. His last four games have seen him and the Cavaliers face off against Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Dwyane Wade. Nearly all of those games were fiercely contested and close. 

So when life and the NBA schedule-makers drop Sasha Pavlovic and the Wolves in your lap on a Wednesday night in January, you take advantage of the opportunity to steal away some valuable downtime for your front line guys. 

The Cavaliers came out of the gates like they weren't all that excited about being there. The Wolves, loaded with young talent, stayed close, grabbed a few leads and battled nobly through the first 20 minutes of play. But J.J. Hickson and the Cavs finished the 2^nd quarter strong and took a 12-point lead into the locker room at halftime. 

There were no 3^rd quarter doldrums either as Cleveland outscored the Timberwolves by seven points in the quarter and then retired LBJ, Hickson and Shaquille O'Neal to the bench to watch the rest of the ballgame.  

Hickson had a big ballgame. The second year forward scored a career-high 23 points in just 25 minutes. He also totaled eight rebounds and a blocked shot. It looked he might need to score 40 points early on as LeBron was simply off his normally superior game. James didn't have his shot going from outside, uncharacteristically missed on a couple point-blank attempts at the rim and was frustrated enough to pick up just his 3^rd technical foul of the season for begging for a foul on an unproductive drive in the 2^nd quarter. 

But the King simply switched gears as the game progressed and became a facilitator and a distributor of the basketball. James dished out a game-high 11 assists, grabbed six rebounds, blocked a shot (another chase-down block at that) and found time to score 12 points. 

LeBron didn't need to exert too much effort in trying to score against the Wolves. Some of his mates had his back. In addition to Hickson's 23, O'Neal and Daniel Gibson each scored 13 points. In case you were thinking I'd drop the