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Not in Section 100, Row 12, though. There, "Ricky D's Renegades" are whooping it up while the NBA's worst team staggers toward another loss down below.

Flanked by rows of empty blue seats, the unofficial fan club for Cleveland guard Ricky Davis, can always be counted on for some fun. Each member paints a letter on his chest and the group spells out a different message for each game.

They came out in force a few weeks ago, spelling: "THIS IS CLEVELAND!" Last Sunday, only six members showed up for a matinee against Orlando and crowded together to form: "31ROX!", a salute to Davis.

These days, even the most die-hard Cavs fans struggle to keep the faith. The hapless Cavaliers have bottomed out.

The league's youngest team is on its way to a 60-loss season. The Gund, as it's known locally, is usually half empty, as the average attendance is down 4,000 fans per game from last year. The club is on its fourth coach in four years, and owner Gordon Gund insists the Cavs are not for sale despite signs to the contrary.

The Carlos Boozer Archive

But right now, James couldn't save the decaying Cavaliers.

"It's been rough," Davis said, shaking his head following a recent practice. "The losing, the decisions, everything. I don't know, man. This has just been crazy."

The chaos continued for the Cavs on Wednesday night with a 111-105 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in front of a generously announced crowd of 9,118.

It was Cleveland's fourth straight defeat, 10th in 11 games and dropped the pitiful Cavs to 11-50 - the fourth straight season they've lost at least 50 games. Losses to the New Orleans Hornets on Friday and the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday dropped Cleveland's record to 11-52.

"It's hard to fathom that we've lost that many," said rookie power forward Carlos Boozer, who only lost 13 games in three years at Duke University and 12 games in four years at Juneau-Douglas High School. Boozer won two Class 4A state high school titles in Alaska and an NCAA championship at Duke.

Welcome to Cleveland, kid.

The Cavs need five more wins to avoid having the worst record - 15-67 - since the club entered the NBA as an expansion team in 1970-71.

Cleveland's downward spiral has been going on for some time. The freefall has been the result of almost constant roster shuffling, bad draft picks (first-round flops Trajan Langdon of Anchorage and DeSagana Diop), questionable trades, inflated contracts and an unwillingness to stick with a plan.

Just two years ago, Cavs general manager Jim Paxson added veteran free agents. It wasn't long before the philosophy was switched to a youth movement.

"I think the main thing is they have to find out what direction they want to go," said Memphis forward Wesley Person, traded on draft day last year by the Cavs. "They've been fighting themselves. The guys they drafted haven't really panned out like they should have. They are just in a tough situation right now."

Person was once part of a nucleus in Cleveland that at times included Shawn Kemp, Lamond Murray, Brevin Knight, Derek Anderson, Bob Sura, Cedric Henderson and Andre Miller.

In the past three years, Paxson has traded all of them.

Paxson has been with the Cavs since 1998, taking over as GM a year later when Wayne Embry stepped down. Embry is credited with resurrecting the Cavs in the early '90s with players such as Brad Daugherty, Mark Price and Larry Nance. He is also partly to blame for the club's downfall.

Embry gave Kemp a ridiculously overpriced contract that hampered the club's ability to make any moves until Paxson dumped the overweight Kemp on Portland in 2000.

Since then, Paxson has been trying to build the Cavs into a winner.

From the looks of things, he's got a long way to go.

"Ultimately, I'm the one who is accountable," said Paxson, who fired coach John Lucas on Jan. 20 after an 8-34 start and replaced him with Keith Smart on an interim basis. "We knew this wouldn't be easy.

"We have the worst record in the NBA," Paxson said. "But we have a better team than that."

Indeed, there are signs of hope. Cleveland's roster includes seven players under the age of 23. One is Dajuan Wagner, a 20-year-old guard whose natural scoring ability is being wasted while the team experiments with him at point guard. Boozer, a second-round pick last June, just turned 21 in November and is making the transition from center in college to power forward in the NBA.

Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas has been healthy, and the 7-foot-3 center's recovery from five foot operations was rewarded with an All-Star spot this season. The enigmatic Davis signed a six-year, $34 million last summer to stay in Cleveland.

"One day we will eventually be out of this situation, the tide will change," said Smart, whose future with the team is uncertain. "Our guys hear on TV and read that they're the worst team in the NBA. There's nothing they can do about it right now."

That would change if the Cavs were to somehow land the 6-foot-8 James, an occasional Gund visitor, whose impact would be felt at the box office and on the floor.

If Cleveland finishes with the worst overall record, the Cavs will get the most pingpong balls in the May 18 lottery and will have a 25 percent chance of getting the No. 1 pick. That also means there's a 75 percent chance they won't get it.

Coles, waived last week, said the Cavs are losing on purpose to improve their draft position, a charge Gund and Paxson have fiercely dismissed for months.

Anyway, the odds are stacked against Cleveland. Since 1988, only twice has the league's worst team won the lottery.

As the Cavs prepared to play Atlanta the other night, some of the "Renegades" pondered what watching James in person 41 times a year would be like.

"It would be great, but if we get LeBron, we get LeBron," shrugged 17-year-old Dan Fornal as the Cavs went through pregame warmups. "This team has amazing talent, and things can only go up from here. I don't think it can get much worse.

"Can it?"