Donovan Mitchell and the Cavs were frustated despite extending their winning streak to 11 games.
After defeating the Chicago Bulls, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ winning streak may have stretched to 11 games. However, there was no jubilation in the visitor’s locker room at United Center. No high-fives, no celebratory speeches. Instead, it was an understanding that, despite the winning, things are less than perfect for the Cavs.
The scoreboard said 139-117, but that final tally was deceptive. The Cavs had once again found themselves clawing out of a hole, this time against a battered Bulls team missing six key contributors. Down by 15 at one point, forced to summon another late-game surge, the Cavs were playing with fire. And they knew it.
“Unacceptable,” Donovan Mitchell bluntly said. “We have to stop doing that. We are a talented team and we are winning these games. But at some point it’s going to come back to bite us in the butt. We have to come out sharper. We have to come out and set the tone. Those things can’t happen.”
The troubling pattern is impossible to ignore. Recently, the Boston Celtics buried Cleveland in an early 25-3 deficit before the Cavs stormed back to steal a win in Boston. At home, against a scrappy Portland Trail Blazers squad, the story was the same—trailing by 18, down at halftime, only to recover just in time. On the road in Chicago against the Bulls? Another rerun.
These slow starts aren’t an anomaly; they’re becoming part of the team’s DNA. And not in a good way.
“It’s definitely a bad habit. We all know it is,” Jarrett Allen said. “We have these slow starts that we need to get rid of. When we start playing teams that are going to be in the playoffs, they are going to attack us early and we can’t always go down first and have to fight back. Makes it so much harder. But the thing about this team, we will develop a bad habit and we will change it in a couple of games. I’m not worried.”
Allen has a point. The Cavs have already shown an ability to correct bad habits. When head coach Kenny Atkinson challenged their slipping defense last month, they responded, climbing into the league’s top three in defensive rating over the last 15 games. When rebounding became an issue, they tightened up and cracked the top five in boards since late January.
Now, the next challenge is clear: show up from the opening tip, not just in crunch time.
Donovan Mitchell and the Cavs showed reason for concern against the Bulls
Matt Marton-Imagn Images
For three quarters against Chicago, the Cavs sputtered. They missed 13 of their first 15 threes and mustered only 24 first-quarter points. They trailed at halftime. Again. The difference? A seven-minute explosion in the fourth quarter that turned a tight game into a rout. A 32-10 run, a dominant 43-23 final period—it looked great in the box score, but the players knew it never should have been that close.
“We have to be careful,” Atkinson admitted. “This league is too hard. We had a great fourth quarter, but for three quarters we were sleepwalking. If you play with your food too much … for a team with the best record in the league, that’s not our identity.”
These habits are dangerous for Cleveland because the competition only gets tougher from here. The Cavs have the best record in the East. They’re closing in on the No. 1 seed. But in a seven-game series, against a battle-tested opponent, they won’t have the luxury of waiting until the fourth quarter to flip the switch.
“We weren’t playing our type of basketball,” Allen added. “It just clicked at the end.”
The numbers are historic—the longest active win streak in the league, a 51-10 record, a franchise-record 16 wins by 20 or more points. But the Cavs aren’t satisfied with regular-season dominance. They have bigger aspirations. And to achieve them, they can’t afford to keep digging these early holes.
For now, they’re getting away with it. But as the postseason looms, they know their margin for error is shrinking fast.