Donovan Mitchell and the Cavs are off to a 10-6 start, well behind last season’s 15-1 pace.
Addition by subtraction is a time-honored tactic in sports, in life even.
The maneuver to remove a negative – trading away a player to break up a jammed-up lineup rotation or letting a malcontent who can turn a locker room into a toxic work environment walk – can turn marvelously positive for an NBA team.
But this is not to be confused with the ol’ bean counter’s bromide of “Do more with less.” That’s more like what we’re seeing from the Cleveland Cavaliers these days as they continue their search for the solid footing they had a year ago.
“Last season,” in other words? Might not want to put it that way. “Last season” has been brought up often to the Cavaliers, at this point eliciting the same sort of reaction that “calm down” so frequently does.
“I think we’ve got to let last year go,” star guard Donovan Mitchell said early in his team’s current six-homestand that runs through Indiana on Friday (7 p.m. ET, Amazon Prime) and the LA Clippers on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, NBA League Pass).
“I think we have to drop the whole, ‘Well, last year it was this.’ It’s not the same, right? … There’s different roles, there’s different things. There’s guys who are hurt, guys in, guys out.
“We haven’t necessarily put it together, and that’s on this group. It’s not pretty right now.”
Fine, we’ll keep the hindsight tight here: At 10-6 heading into the Pacers’ visit Friday, Cleveland has subtracted five victories from its 15-1 mark through 16 games a year ago. The loss at Boston that ended the Cavs’ 15-0 start to 2024-25 was a pause, not a veer, because they promptly went 18-3 to reach the second week of January at 33-4.
They didn’t suffer their sixth defeat until Jan. 16 at eventual champion Oklahoma City. Their 30-8 close from there earned them the second-best W-L mark (64-18) in franchise history, the East’s No. 1 seed and, for Kenny Atkinson in his first Cavs season, the Red Auerbach Trophy as the NBA’s Coach of the Year.
After those regular-season streaks of 15, 12 and 16 victories, Cleveland shot through the first round, sweeping Miami by an average margin of 30.5 and scoring more points in the last three games (383) than the Heat managed in four (382). Then they went splat against Indiana in the East semis, losing three of the five games at home.
The offense that ranked No. 1 all season went cold in the Eastern Conference semifinals: 42.6% shooting, 44 fewer assists than the Pacers (103-147), 41 more turnovers (114-73). Three-pointers became guesswork, a 29.4% (57 of 194) adventure while Indiana hummed along at 42.1% (69 of 164). Defensively, the Cavs’ third-best field-goal resistance got riddled by Indiana’s 50.4% shooting.
It ended at least a round too early for Cleveland last spring against an opponent that had won 14 fewer games. Disappointing, yes, but with a clear mission for 2025-26: Learn from the experience, improve around the margins, and take another step into the team’s collective prime.
That’s not what we’re seeing, however, as the new season wraps its first month. The subtraction from which the Cavaliers have suffered has been a mix of unavoidable and self-induced, with the addition so far only of frustration and defeat.
Losing guard Darius Garland (toe) and forward Max Strus (foot) to injuries have been the most damaging minuses. The former, an All-Star point guard who initiates so much of what the team does offensively, has appeared in only three games. The latter, who punishes teams over the top with 3-pointers, is still recovering from surgery on his fractured left foot.
Not having two valuable starters might be enough for some to table this whole topic, given that Atkinson and his staff have cobbled together the current 10-6 record out of nine different starting lineups.
“What’s different is,” Atkinson said last weekend, “we won 64 games healthy last year. That’s kind of the baseline, and your identity’s different. The chess pieces have changed.”
A few deficits remain, though. Things the Cavs as a group and even as individuals can attend to as they push toward a season more reminiscent of what they achieved last year (those stinging words again).
One is rebounding. Cleveland ranked sixth on the glass in 2024-25, and fifth in defensive boards. Now it’s down to 21st overall and 25th on defense. That creates a cascade of second-chance failures, more effort expended at that end and nothing good at all.
The team’s free-throw proficiency is down, too, however subtly. A dip to 75% from 77.6% might not be a lot spread across 21 games so far, but it was lethal in the loss Wednesday against Houston: 20-of-32 from the line, compounding the 51-39 disparity on the boards.
More toughness and more physical breadth would come in handy for this crew, too. And a little more tangible in what’s been missing for the Cavs has been another expected step in All-Star big Evan Mobley’s development.
The reigning Kia Defensive Player of the Year is about where he was a year ago in his production, but so far hasn’t shown the extra gear so many fans felt was baked into his progression for Year 5.
All of this has injected urgency for what otherwise would seem a mismatch game Friday against the 2-13 Pacers. If this one goes sideways, what Mitchell said the other day — “You can get on somebody every night” – will dial up considerably.
* * *
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X
