People who lose a limb may sporadically feel pain in the area of the body that is no longer there. A phenomenon that, quickly and poorly explained, occurs due to the misinterpretation of the neuronal reorganization that the brain must make of the nervous networks that connected with the amputated part. Applicable as a metaphor to pain for what is no longer there. For the loss.
Those moments in which you become aware that something everyday is gone with the departure of the person with whom you used to share those moments or do certain things. That is when the loss, the absence of what was and is not, of what was and is no longer; floods everything.
This is where the Cleveland Cavaliers find themselves right now, with the memory still fresh of a season that reached its peak in the most efficient playoff series in history on an offensive level and of which there seems to be no trace left. Authors of the best attack, the eighth best defense and the second best record in the league last year, Cleveland is now in ninth position in the East, having lost seven of its last ten games and being below average in almost every core statistic in this period.
Searching for my destiny, living deferred
There was something magical about their 2024-25 campaign because it occurred without significant changes to the squad. The mere arrival of Kenny Atkinson represented a revolution, especially offensively, in a team that suddenly ran more, shot better, moved the ball like angels and fitted the roles of primary, secondary pieces and squad resources with great simplicity.
Today the ball no longer travels, it is towed. Three-pointers are no longer activators of space and a consequence of healthy circulation, but rather the easy escape to sequences of worrying horizontality and congestion in which the pressure on the rim does not exist. Only the Golden State Warriors shoot more from the outside than these Cavs, another team marked by the difficulties it finds breaking the offensive monotony if it is not under the guidance of Stephen Curry.
Every once in a while a good deed comes along. A continuation of Jarret Allen that ends in an extra pass, a transition guided by Darius Garland that ends with a no-look pass, a good reading of the rival zone. But the team is unable to sustain it over time because it does not come easy to it and it gets lost in lost simplicity. Complainers about any difficulty they face.
Now that the attack is not working, and even when it was working, the absence of what JB Bickerstaff built a few years ago on the other side of the field also hurts. Around the figures of Jarret Allen, Lauri Markkanen and an Evan Mobley who recently arrived in the league, the Cavaliers anticipated the return of big ball as a speech. The one we see today, in different ways and in certain sections, in Houston, Oklahoma City, New York or Detroit, to name a few.
That framework was built around the strengths of its most dominant pieces. Today, Atkinson resorts to the zone with no other purpose than to try not to expose his weakest links. And sheltering individuals, which leaves the collective in the open.
The lows as consolation
Of all their losses, the Cavaliers especially hide in the temporary ones. In the losses that cause their fantastic 4 to have only shared the court for 57 minutes in just 4 games so far this season. The nuance is that the rest of the candidates in the Eastern conference may find a similar excuse.
The Boston Celtics are playing without Jayson Tatum and having demolished their championship squad, OG Anunoby has missed 9 of the New York Knicks’ 25 games, Detroit has won the 3 games it has played without Cade Cunningham, Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero have played only 14 games together and Jalen Suggs still has physical problems with the Orlando Magic. They all look at the Cavaliers from the top of the table.
With Garland’s lukewarm return, the perceived stagnation at Mobley, Allen’s strange rotational management and Mitchell’s hustling when nothing else works, it’s easy to forget that Max Strus was a constant process facilitator. A player who, through his movement and spatial threat, did not let the Cavaliers stop playing downhill and allowed them to emerge victorious from the exchange of blows. At the beginning of this campaign, Atkinson found an answer in Sam Merrill, and it is not unusual for his loss to coincide with the team’s final descent into hell.
These days headlines open with the incitement to change in Cleveland. The media environment of the franchise has understood what they may not understand from within. That it would be strange if nothing were to go back to the way it was before and that the sooner they accept it, the sooner they can get out of the loop they are in. Whether this change comes through a transfer, a dismissal or by internal initiative, the project needs to stop thinking about what they were because only then will they be able to see the future as a goal and not as a consolation. And that what they are stops hurting for what is no longer there.
(Cover photo by Geoff Burke-Imagn Images)
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