Kenny Atkinson has spent the first five games of the Cavaliers’ season naming the issues. The trouble is, Cleveland keeps giving him new ones to explain.
After Thursday’s 114-111 loss to the Atlanta Hawks, Atkinson again pointed to the same theme that has followed his team through an uneven 3-2 start: the Cavaliers have not put together the kind of full-game effort expected from a contender.
"We haven't had that great game. We haven't had that full complete 48 minutes of domination," Atkinson said.
That’s the core of it. Cleveland has the talent to hang with the NBA’s best, but it keeps letting games slip out of its hands - big leads vanish, defensive breakdowns pile up and what should be comfortable finishes turn into tense fourth-quarter fights.
Against Atlanta, the pattern was painfully clear. The Cavaliers held the Hawks to 16 points in the first quarter and opened up a 15-point lead, only for the game to swing hard the other way.
Atlanta ripped off a 19-2 run in the second quarter, flipping an 11-point deficit into a six-point lead. Cleveland scored just 16 points in that frame, then gave up 43 in the third.
Atkinson pointed to the offense drying up, Atlanta’s three-point shooting and Cleveland’s trouble on the glass.
"We got to do a better job securing rebounds, important rebounds," he said afterward.
The numbers back that up. Atlanta grabbed 15 offensive rebounds, and Onyeka Okongwu was a problem all night with 29 points and 12 boards. Cleveland also had trouble keeping the Hawks out of transition, and once Atlanta found its rhythm, it controlled the pace for long stretches.
But knowing the issue and solving it are two different things. Atkinson is responsible for more than explaining what went wrong after the fact. He has to make sure the Cavaliers are locked into their defensive assignments, communicating, finishing possessions and recognizing when a lineup needs to change before an opponent’s run gets out of hand.
This wasn’t some isolated stumble, either. Cleveland already watched a 29-point lead against Philadelphia disappear in its season opener.
Against Brooklyn, another comfortable edge nearly got away in a rough fourth quarter. Atlanta is simply the latest team to find a crack and keep pressing.
Atkinson had previously blamed turnovers and Cleveland’s struggles against Philadelphia’s defensive pressure for that collapse. Against Atlanta, the explanation shifted to offensive struggles and rebounding.
Both are fair points on their own. Together, they leave a bigger question hanging over the start of the season: why does this team keep finding different ways to beat itself?
The roster is too good for this to keep happening. With Donovan Mitchell, James Harden, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, the Cavaliers have experienced players, defensive talent and real championship expectations. That kind of group shouldn’t need everything to go right offensively just to survive momentum swings.
The schedule won’t offer much room for error, either. Cleveland heads to Milwaukee on Saturday before a stretch that includes Oklahoma City twice, Philadelphia and New York. If the Cavaliers don’t sharpen up defensively, those games could expose every one of these habits in a hurry.
Five games don’t define a season. But they’ve revealed a pattern that’s getting harder to dismiss.
Atkinson has identified the problems. Now he has to fix them.
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