The Cleveland Cavaliers are in a rut-and there's no sugarcoating it.
After dropping a tough one to the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday, the Cavs now sit at 15-13, clinging to the ninth seed in the Eastern Conference. That’s two games above .500, but it feels like a team still searching for its identity. The loss marked Cleveland’s third defeat in their last four outings, a stretch that includes a stumble against a shorthanded Warriors squad missing both Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler, and a surprising home loss to the Charlotte Hornets.
It’s been nearly a month since the Cavaliers strung together back-to-back wins. The last time they managed that was in late November, when they knocked off the Indiana Pacers and Los Angeles Clippers-two teams that, at the time, were sitting toward the bottom of their respective standings. That’s not exactly a confidence-boosting résumé for a team that finished atop the conference just a season ago.
Yes, injuries have played a role. Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and Max Strus have all missed time, and that’s no small detail.
But even with those setbacks, the drop-off has been jarring. This is largely the same roster that powered Cleveland to a first-place finish last year.
Aside from Ty Jerome-who departed for Memphis in free agency-the core remains intact. So the question becomes: what’s going wrong?
Let’s start with the perimeter-on both ends of the floor. Defensively, Cleveland has struggled to contain the three-point line.
Opponents are hitting 36.6% of their shots from beyond the arc against the Cavs, which ranks 22nd in the league. That’s a problem in today’s NBA, where spacing and outside shooting are king.
If you can’t close out effectively or rotate with purpose, you’re going to get burned-and Cleveland has been.
But it’s not just about defending the three. The Cavs have also been ice-cold from deep themselves.
They’re shooting just 33.8% from three-point range, which puts them 28th in the league. That’s bottom-tier production, and it’s especially concerning given how reliant this team can be on spacing the floor to open up driving lanes for Garland and Donovan Mitchell.
The offensive rhythm just hasn’t been there, and the lack of consistent shooting is making it harder for Cleveland to generate quality looks. Combine that with defensive lapses on the perimeter, and you’ve got a recipe for the kind of inconsistency we’ve seen over the past month.
There’s still time to right the ship-plenty of it, in fact. But the clock is ticking.
The Cavs currently find themselves in Play-In Tournament territory, and with one of the highest payrolls in the league, that’s not where anyone expected them to be. This group was built to contend, not to scrap for a postseason spot.
If Cleveland wants to avoid a lost season, they’ll need to find answers-and fast. Whether it’s getting healthy, tightening up their perimeter defense, or simply knocking down more open looks, the margin for error is shrinking.
The talent is there. The continuity is there.
Now it’s about execution.