After the Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the skidding, shorthanded Portland Trail Blazers on December 3, Donovan Mitchell went on a tangent. He was direct about the Cavs' approach to the season and how there aren't any excuses for their inconsistencies, referring to the Oklahoma City Thunder's historic start after winning the NBA Finals.
“OKC won a championship,” Mitchell said following that Portland loss last Wednesday. “I'm not comparing us to them, but they're 20-1 or whatever it is. There's urgency around the league, and we want to be that. We want to be at that level. I don't know anybody else's record, but that's the one that stands out. We want to be that championship team.”
The Thunder have since racked up four more wins, off to a 24-1 start and running roughshod over the league. Their latest win was a 138-89 throttling of the Phoenix Suns in the Emirates NBA Cup on Wednesday night.
One day removed from OKC's blowout win, ClutchPoints asked Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson if he's paid attention to the defending champions when setting the standard he wants to in Cleveland.
“If you do that in the NBA, I think you'll drive yourself crazy if you start looking at other teams and what they're doing,” Atkinson said following Thursday's practice. “I've just really got to be focused on us. I look at our metrics, our KPIs [key performance indicators]. I looked at it the other day, I think we're kind of borderline top-10 in both offensive [efficiency] and [defensive efficiency]. It's not like, ‘Oh shoot, we're 26th in this and 19th [in this].' So, there are some real positives here.
“We're not where we want to be, but we're not way behind. So I do think there's some positive signs. We look at all the expected stuff too, so that gives us checking our processes; those numbers are pretty good. That doesn't mean I'm satisfied with where we are, but I do think there's some positive signs that we're trending decently, and as we get healthier, we'll continue to get better.”
It makes sense that Atkinson doesn't want to look elsewhere to galvanize Cleveland because motivation should be internal. With that said, the Thunder are proving that championship habits can carry over despite the notion that there can be hangovers from previous champions.
Atkinson's Cavs didn't follow up a week off with the best performance in the nation's capital, narrowly escaping with a 130-126 comeback win over the banged-up, three-win Washington Wizards. It required Mitchell's heroics for the umpteenth time this season, too.
“You don't come out and just solve it just because you had five days off,” Mitchell said postgame on Friday. “It's one of those things where you've got to keep chipping, gotta keep doing all the little things, all the little stuff. That's what it took to win [Friday]. We found a way. Now, can we do it again and again? Not really be on everybody else's timeline, but our timeline. Continue to build.
“We have to continue to go every single night. We can't look around the league and compare. No. Every single night, we've got to be the best we can be. We're not there yet. Obviously, yeah, we're hurt, but I'm not using that as an excuse. We have enough in this locker room, and we've got to continuously be better as a group. But, it's good that we're going through this now and not during that stretch in March right before the playoffs.”
The Cavs sit at 15-11 with plenty of winnable games ahead against sub-.500 teams in this upcoming stretch. The Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls will be their opponents for the next four contests. It'll be paramount for the wine and gold to stack victories and get back to their identity, as it's a prime opportunity to right the ship.
