The sky is falling for Cavaliers Nation. At least, for a couple of people who care about the Cavs. Most realize the recent skid is just how it often goes with NBA contenders in March.
Either way, the Cavs enter Friday’s road game against the Phoenix Suns on a three-game slide. For the record, those losses came to Orlando, the LA Clippers and Sacramento, respectively. All of it follows a 16-game winning streak.
Overall, the Cavs (56-13) are the best in the East. They lead the Celtics by six games with 13 to go. So, yeah, things are great.
And my Full Court Cleveland partner Daniel “Booby” Gibson says this is just life in the NBA. As a member of the 66-16 Cavs team, Gibson should know.
“I just think we got a little spoiled as Cavaliers fans,” he said on the latest episode. “You know what I mean? The Cavs won 15 (in a row) twice, 12 another time … You get so used to winning that when you lose, it’s like the whole world is coming down on your head. And that’s just not the case at all.”
The Cavs had some tough stretches during the record-setting regular season of 2008-09 as well.
“Those moments are where we learned to trust each other,” Gibson said. “They’re where we got better, or where we got more connected as a team.”
The Cavaliers still have three games on this trip (Phoenix, Utah on Sunday, and Portland on Tuesday).
“So I’m looking at this stretch right now, and the worst thing you want to do is peak. You don’t want to be at your best a month away from the playoffs,” Gibson said. “It might be good for us to lose a couple games and wake that dog up, light that fire in us, to figure out the team we want to be at the end.”
You can watch the entire show below, with Booby, the legendary Rafa Hernandez-Brito, and for better or worse, Yours Truly.
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Not quite pickin up what you’re putting down there Booby. Oh, I do understand it, but not quite buying it for now. I hope you’re right & I’m wrong. But what we’ve been seeing happen
seems to be both Mitchell/Garland are just enough off on their 3’s it’s not allowing Cav’s (all of them) to operate at that precision that the others are used to, & it’s affecting the bench players too. At the same time Jared Allen has his own game issues where he’s just a little off too, injuries affecting both him(hand) and Mitchell(groin). All these happening at same time is disruptive to team defense too.
Max(big time) & Mobley HAVE both picked it up a lot to try to compensate, but even Mobley, while he’s been mostly terrific, he’s been trying so hard to do it all, he’s turning it over a little bit MORE. It’s just a lot of little individual issues each one is going to have to work out–IF they can recognize & resolve each one. That’s where the coaching is NEEDED. Hope so.