Game Night Observations: The Dog Days, Defensive Issues and Leadership

For the first time under Kenny Atkinson, the Cavs are on a losing streak.

The Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Houston Rockets 135-131 on Saturday night to drop three consecutive games for the first time this season.

This is a losing streak. It has happened before, just not to this team and just not in this season. But it has happened before.

The Cavs are in a funk. That’s a safe thing to say. It doesn’t mean that all the wins they racked up this season don’t count, and it doesn’t mean that the rest of the season is doomed. It means that they’re not playing their best basketball right now.

Maybe you’ve heard of “The Dog Days of August” in baseball. That season is excruciatingly long and somewhere between July 4 and the middle of August the season becomes a real grind to get through.

It feels like that’s where the Cavs are right now. In the nine games the Cavs have played since beating Oklahoma City in the NBA’s Game of the Year, they’ve gone 4-5. That night was certainly the peak of the first half of the season for the Cavs and save for the game against the Phoenix Suns, they haven’t played great since. If the ball bounces a different way on a play or two in the first game against Houston or on Friday night in Philadelphia, the record would look different but the sentiment would remain the same. The majority of January has been unkind to Cleveland.