CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs are officially in trouble. Not the panic-button, sky-is-falling kind of trouble that head coach Kenny Atkinson dismisses, but the more insidious variety – the kind where bad habits slowly calcify into permanent behavior.
Sunday’s embarrassing 119-111 overtime loss to the Charlotte Hornets wasn’t a fluke. It fit a growing theme that suggests this team’s inconsistency is now a feature, not a bug.
“The Cavs are now 15-12, sitting eighth in the Eastern Conference. And at this point in the season, the record is no longer lying to us,” Wine and Gold Talk host Ethan Sands opened the latest podcast episode, putting into words what fans have sensed for weeks.
The most alarming pattern? Cleveland’s tendency to trail terrible teams by significant margins before attempting comebacks. Against the Hornets and Washington Wizards – teams with a combined 10 wins heading into Sunday – the Cavs still found themselves down by 17 points in both matchups.
“That’s not variance to me anymore. That’s behavior. That’s habits that are going to be sticking with this Cavaliers team,” Sands declared with the kind of bluntness the situation demands.
This team has developed a dangerous formula. Sleepwalk through three quarters, hope Donovan Mitchell performs superhero theatrics in the fourth. But what happens when Mitchell is mortal? Sunday provided that answer – a humiliating defeat where the Cavs became the first NBA team since 2015 to go scoreless in an overtime period.
The search for an identity continues to plague Cleveland a third into the season.
When asked about the team’s struggles, Darius Garland didn’t sugarcoat the situation: “I think we really try to just find ourselves, trying to find our identity again. A lot of people going in and out, a lot of different lineups. So just trying to get everybody back together under one accord, that’s going to help us a lot.”
Yet Garland was quick to eliminate excuses, adding, “The guys out there are more than capable of winning basketball games and really competing at a high level. So there’s no excuses for that.”
The roster flux is real – Evan Mobley is sidelined for 2-4 weeks with a calf injury and Max Strus remains out – but championship contenders overcome these challenges. The Cavaliers instead seem to be using them as a crutch.
What makes this situation particularly concerning is timing.
Twenty-seven games in – a third of the NBA season complete. Playoff teams typically establish their identity by Christmas, yet the Cavaliers remain adrift, dropping winnable games that could prove costly come playoff seeding time.
“The identity that this Cavs team is searching for isn’t something you postpone. It’s something you carry into the building every single night,” Sands emphasized, capturing the urgency of Cleveland’s predicament.
The coming weeks appear treacherous for a vulnerable Cavaliers squad.
After splitting the first two games of what was supposed to be a six-game springboard, Cleveland now faces increasingly difficult matchups with their confidence already shaken.
“The clock is ticking on this team, on this season,” Sands warned. “And if something doesn’t change and change quickly, the final stretch of December won’t just be difficult. ... the end of the stretch of the December month will be revealing, and the rest of the league will be watching closely as February starts to feel uncomfortably close.”
Want to hear Sands break down exactly where the Cavaliers have gone wrong and what might still save their season? Listen to the full episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast for his unfiltered analysis of a team at a crossroads.
Here’s the podcast for this week: