The Cleveland Cavaliers are at the most important part of their season, and they have hit a wall of frustration and have lost three straight games; the latest was a bad loss to the Chicago Bulls 98-94 on the Cavs home court on Saturday night. The team now stands at 41-33 and slipped to the seven seed in the Eastern Conference standings. If the regular season were to end today, they’d have to first play in the play-in tournament against the surging Brooklyn Nets.
It’s now a test of the teams’ will and effort if they want to stay in the mix, otherwise, the season that started so well will end with plenty of frustration. There have been numerous obstacles, including injuries that have affected this group, but today is the worst time to be on a losing streak and looking like a squad that has run out of gas.
If Cleveland had beaten Chicago, they would have climbed to the fifth spot in the conference, but with the loss and having the Toronto Raptors demolish the Indiana Pacers on Saturday night, they are stuck in the seven spot.
Saturday, for the Cavs, was just a bad game from the start. They were down 28-16 at the end of the first quarter. They threw up bricks from the three-point line and went 1-of-18 from beyond the three-point arc in the first half. They went down 53-35 at the break.
The Wine and Gold squad tried getting it closer in the second half, and they did close it to 85-82 by the 4th quarter, but continued to make mistakes, turned the ball over, and just didn’t work together as a team. All ingredients to a team falling apart.
Let’s first look at a Cavaliers player that gave it his all and was one bright spot on the team in their loss and then we’ll look at the one dud that has to be better if this team is going to have any chance in the future.