If you think Brown and the Cavs, trailing, 3-1, in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals are ready to make wholesale changes or throw in the towel for Game 5 tonight at The Q, think again.

"I still have confidence and trust in this team," Brown said. "This team is together. They're determined.

"I can't knock the effort that I've gotten. They've played extremely hard.

"Orlando shot the crap out of the ball. This is about as even a series as you could expect. . . . They've just made one or two plays down the stretch more than us. I still feel the confidence. I still feel the togetherness. I still feel like we have a chance to win this."

Added Cavs center Zydrunas Ilgauskas: "If anybody can come out of it, we can. Stick with us. Believe it, because we believe in ourselves."

Cavs forward Ben Wallace, who played on the 2003 Detroit Pistons team that came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat Orlando in the first round, told his teammates after a tough Game 4 loss in Orlando: "I've done this before. We can do this now."

Ilgauskas admitted the Cavs had done everything to try to stop Magic All-Star center Dwight Howard as well as the Magic's multiple outside shooters. But Brown is confident in the team's defensive scheme.

"I'm comfortable with the things we have on the floor," he said. "We've put ourselves in position to win. . . . You can't stick with one coverage the whole game. We've mixed up our pick-and-roll coverage in this series than I think we ever have playing any team. They do a terrific job."

As for substantial defensive changes tonight, Brown said, "You don't want to go too far away from your comfort zone."

No T: The NBA has rescinded the technical foul assessed to Magic center Dwight Howard for taunting Anderson Varejao after a basket with 4:11 left in the third quarter in Game 4.

"I didn't really see it," Varejao said before practice Wednesday. "I don't know what happened. I don't know if he looked at me or said something. It is what it is. All I'm thinking about is the next game. We need this win."

Howard now has five technical fouls this postseason. Any player who accumulates seven gets a one-game suspension.

No Joe: Cavs forward Joe Smith played only four minutes in Game 4, and some fans thought he could have helped defend Howard. But Brown said Smith was the odd man out when he went to his small lineup featuring LeBron James, Varejao, and guards Mo Williams, Delonte West and Daniel Gibson.

"You have a choice," Brown said. "You can go big or you can go small. If you go small, which is what we did quite a bit, then either Ben, Andy, Z or Joe aren't going to play.

"I'm rotating those four guys for two spots, so there's just not a lot of minutes. If we go small and they play Dwight 40 minutes, that's a tough matchup for Joe."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mschmitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4668

Box

Game 5: Cavaliers vs. Orlando Magic

Tipoff: 8:30 p.m., The Q.

TV/radio: TNT; WTAM AM/1100.

Notable: Cavs face elimination as they trail in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals, 3-1. Eight teams (out of 182) have come back from 3-1 deficits to win an NBA postseason series. . . . The Cavs average 101.3 points per game against the Magic, higher than their 97 points per game in the postseason, but they're giving up 104.3 points per game to the Magic, up from 86.8 points per game in the postseason. . . . Since the 2006 postseason, the Cavs are 22-3 when scoring at least 94 points, and two of those losses have come to the Magic. . . . Orlando, which won Game 1 of this series, is 7-1 when it wins the first game of a series. . . . Orlando's Rafer Alston scored a career-postseason-high 26 points in Game 4, going 6-of-12 on 3-pointers. The Magic made 17-of-38 (44.7 percent) 3-pointers in Game 4.