CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs’ play of late — wins wrapped in mercurial stretches — has left coach Kenny Atkinson struggling to find the right descriptor.
On Monday night, after their latest uneven performance, Atkinson’s word choice brought back haunting memories of a darker time.
“It’s kind of like a — is ‘slug’ a word? Like, it’s a slug. A slog? What’s the word? Slog! A slug is an animal, right? So, it’s a slog,” Atkinson said. “And we gotta figure it out.”
Phew. Glad he cleared that up. Wouldn’t want a repeat of former coach John Beilein’s verbal blunder that led to him apologizing a half decade ago — an infamous slipup that accelerated his eventual exit.
Atkinson collected himself and then continued.
“I’m glad we pulled it out. That game’s not going to go in the Hall of Fame for the Cavs. How should I say it? It’s not smooth sailing right now. I say that with all humility. We won the game. Great. We’re still a little bit clunky on both sides of the ball,” Atkinson explained. “I told the guys we’ve been kind of coming with our B game. Against the better teams, we’ve gotta raise our standards.”
It’s been that kind of tenor from Atkinson much of the first month.
The Cavs beat the Bucks, 118-106. They are 10-5. They woke up Tuesday morning with the Eastern Conference’s second-best record and third-best point differential — despite Max Strus not yet making his debut following offseason foot surgery, All-Star point guard Darius Garland limited to just three games thus far, eight different starting lineups and a few stylistic tweaks.
But after everything that happened a year ago, on the heels of another playoff flameout, the Cavs are under a microscope. Atkinson and others within the organization have made it clear: The regular season is not solely about the win-loss record. It’s about developing championship habits. It’s about the how and why, processes that the Cavs hope will lead to a better springtime outcome. It’s about allowing youngster Evan Mobley — the linchpin of Cleveland’s title hopes — to grow his offensive wings and become more of a reliable focal point. It’s about finding what works and what doesn’t. Establishing an identity. Setting a daily standard. Then playing to it, no matter the circumstances.
Is that happening?
“I feel like it’s coming and then we kind of regress back,” Atkinson said. “I think our talent level is such as that we can still eek out wins like this, but we all know collectively, we gotta do better.
“These last two games, there’s some focus things out there where we kind of — we all saw it. We’ll look at it, we’ll analyze it. My job is to help them help smooth this thing out. I don’t want to seem doomsday here. You get a win in the NBA, it’s tough. But we know we can play better.”
On Monday night, 48 hours after Atkinson talked about his team needing to find its collective juice, Cleveland came out a little, ahem, sluggish.
It was in an 11-2 hole less than three minutes into the game. Trailed by double digits for a long stretch of the first quarter. Didn’t take its first lead until the second quarter. And had to fight uphill almost the entire half.
That climb became more surmountable at the 3:03 mark of the first half, as Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo exited with a groin injury and never returned.
Even still, it wasn’t, to borrow one of Atkinson’s phrases, smooth sailing from there. It took a 10-3 run late in the fourth quarter to finally create enough comfortable breathing room and put away the pesky Giannis-less Bucks.
Not quite up to standard.
“It’s not going to be perfect and that’s OK,” Donovan Mitchell said. “But every day we come in here to work, win, lose or draw. We’re going to have nights where we play well, we’re going to have nights we play bad, but there’s a standard of effort, there’s a standard of energy, the mental, intensity, being locked in even when you’re physically not there. We’re talented. We can compete with anybody in this league. But the next level is being able to push through that mental.”
“It’s definitely not perfect,” added Sam Merrill, who played through a finger injury and scored 20 points. “Luckily, we still got a long way to go here in the season. I do feel like we are talking about the right things. There’s some clunky spacing at times. A lot of new guys trying to figure out roles. We’ll get there. We’ve got the talent, we’ve got the personnel, we’ve got the coaching staff. There’s no egos. No issues there. We’ll get there.”
Before the regular season began, Atkinson spoke about needing 15 games before he could provide a proper, clear-eyed, stats-backed evaluation of this team.
The Cavs have hit the 15-game threshold. So, what does Atkinson think now?
“Can I get 25 [games] this year?” he asked with a laugh. “It’s just different. It’s a different team. It’s a different situation. Sometimes it just takes longer to figure out your team. There’s four, sometimes five new guys in the rotation. That’s different from last year.
“We’ve still got to figure that out, what all that looks like and how to best. … it’s really putting the best guys around Evan and Don, and we’re still searching a little bit for that.”
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