Antawn Jamison, who hurt his shoulder during pre-season and missed the first nine games, sparkled in his season debut, scoring 31 points and grabbing 10 rebounds for the Wizards.
"It felt good to be out there competing, being out there with my team mates and having fun again," said Jamison, who connected on 12 of 22 shots. "One thing that I've noticed lately is our energy level has been down. I tried to change that. "I've been sitting down forever so I have a lot of energy."
Cleveland (8-4) saw a 17-point, second-quarter lead evaporate amid a flurry of turnovers and a stagnant offence.
"We played one quarter of good basketball and the last three quarters were not good at all," said Cleveland coach Mike Brown.
"In the second half we brought the ball to a complete stop offensively.
"We didn't have any player movement or ball movement. I don't know how we could have so many turnovers in the second half [nine] because we weren't moving the ball.
"Our energy wasn't there, our focus wasn't there, our ball movement wasn't there, our player movement wasn't there. Nothing. We were really flat.
"And it resulted in us getting ourselves kicked."
Washington's Caron Butler scored seven points during a 16-2 fourth-quarter surge that turned a three-point lead into a 95-78 advantage with just over six minutes to play.
"When you fall behind by 17 to a team that's probably the hottest team in the league right now, it would have been very easy to say, ‘Well, not tonight'," Wizards coach Flip Saunders said. "But they kept fighting through it."
The Cavaliers played without centre Shaquille O'Neal, who missed his third successive game while nursing a shoulder injury.
James said the Cavaliers, whose five-game winning streak was snapped, could have used the physical presence of the seven-foot-one, 147.4-kilogramme O'Neal. "When it becomes a rat race with us not having our big fella down in the paint to slow things down, we become a jump shooting team at times," said James.
Results
ATLANTA 105 Miami 90
NY Knicks 110 INDIANA 103
ORLANDO 108 Oklahoma 94
PHILI 86 Charlotte 84
WASH'TON 108 Cleveland 91
BOSTON 109 Golden State 95
MEMPHIS 106 LA Clippers 91
MILWAUKEE 99 New Jersey 85
Houston 97 MINNESOTA 84
DALLAS 99 San Antonio 94
UTAH 104 Toronto 91
PORTLAND 87 Detroit 81
home team in CAPS
