When Shaquille O’Neal injured his thumb on Thursday night I assumed there would be concern within the Cavaliers locker room over their lack of depth in the front court. With Zydrunas Ilgauskas recently traded to Washington and now O’Neal out for at least the next few games, the team had lost two of their prominent center’s within the span of two weeks.

Turns out Cavaliers head coach Mike Brown doesn’t share the same concerns with the current big men at his disposal.

“We’ve played with J.J. (Hickson) at center from time to time throughout the course of the year,” Brown told the media before Cleveland’s game against Toronto. “We knew he had played well for us all year so when he got his number called we didn’t expect anything different. It’s unfortunate that Shaq went down but it seems every time somebody does go down we just have other guys step up.”

True to his statement before the game, over the next few hours Cleveland’s big men rose to the occasion. Antawn Jamison snagged a game-high 11 rebounds, Hickson had six points in 13 minutes off the bench and Leon Powe snagged four rebounds in his 16 minutes off the bench.

Heck, even Jamario Moon contributed with three rebounds in his four minutes of burn.

Not only that, but Anderson Varejao started 42 games for Cleveland last season and is currently averaging a career-high 29.2 minutes per game. Against Toronto he stepped up with a strong game in only his seventh start of the season before fouling out near the end of the fourth quarter.

When the two centers you’ve had at your disposal for the majority of the season aren’t suited up and your third string center fouls most teams would panic. Not for Cleveland. Due to the versatility they have on their roster when this happened Brown decided to play small ball.

For the majority of overtime Brown went with a smaller lineup that featured three guards (Mo Williams, Anthony Parker, and Delonte West) and two forwards (LeBron James and Antawn Jamison). This worked to perfection as Cleveland outscored Toronto 15-7 in the final five minutes to steal a big win on the road.

Leading the way was Williams who hit two consecutive daggers from beyond the arc early in overtime to help give Cleveland a lead they wouldn’t conceded.

“Instead of pushing the ball off the dribble we ran the floor incredibly hard and got some open looks from the three-point line,” Brown explained to the media after the game. “Then we were able to keep them off balance a little bit with our pick-and-roll. They wanted to go small and have (Andrea) Bargnani guard Jamison and that’s a tough matchup when you have Bargnani guarding Jamison and we have no other bigs out there because now you’re going to have LeBron (James) turning the corner in a pick and roll situation. He’s big enough to throw over the defense which is what he did and he kind of picked them apart.”

Cleveland appears to be facing a test with their front court depleted but if last night was any indication it won’t slow the team down too much.

Besides, having James on the court is always a great equalizer.