The Cleveland Cavaliers' season has been so out of whack that even their home-court advantage is seeing slippage. After falling to a depleted Charlotte Hornets squad on Sunday, the Cavs' record at Rocket Arena dropped to 9-7 among a cascade of boos.
“I was a fan once. I’d boo us, too,” Cleveland All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell said following the 119-111 loss. “We're not playing well. The city deserves better than what we've been giving, and we’ve got to go out there and figure it out. If we want to be who we want to be, we’ve got to go out there and figure it out as a collective.”
To put this funk in perspective, the Cavs have already lost as many games at home as they did all of last year. It took only until mid-December.
Darius Garland, Mitchell's All-Star backcourt partner, downplayed hearing those boos, instead asking for the crowd to push its usual infectious energy into the team.
“I know it's not a lot to cheer for right now, but we need the fans in it,” Garland said. “That gets us going. So when the fans [are] not in it, the bench has to be into it. Larry [Nance Jr.] did a really good job, and Thomas [Bryant], on the bench [Sunday]. Really doing everything they can to try to get some energy in the arena, standing up, screaming from the other side of the floor. Really trying to find that energy. That's what we need.”
Injuries aside, it has been a seesaw affair in terms of how this group has performed in Northeast Ohio over the last four seasons.
The 2024-25 wine and gold didn't drop their seventh game at Rocket Arena until the regular-season finale in mid-April, going 34-7 overall.
But in J.B. Bickerstaff's final year as head coach, Cleveland did it by December 21, 2023, and finished 26-15. In the season before that, where the Cavs went 31-10 at the previously-named Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, it wasn't until February 23, 2023, that they reached seven losses.
As for this current group's overall record, the Cavs sit at 15-12 with a lot of season left. But things are going to get awkward quickly if there isn't a turnaround in this winnable stretch of games against the Chicago Bulls and Hornets.
