The Cleveland Cavaliers will be playing at home instead of spending the weekend in Las Vegas when they start the post-NBA Cup part of their season on Friday night against the Washington Wizards.
The Cavaliers have won 21 of their first 25 games, giving them the best record in the NBA. However, two of their four losses came to the Boston Celtics and Atlanta Hawks during the group stage of the NBA Cup, which allowed the Hawks to move on to the quarterfinals. As a result, the Cavaliers had an unexpected four-day break.
Guard Darius Garland thinks the time off, especially after their 122-113 loss to Miami in their most recent game on Sunday, might actually be helpful.
“We’ll go back to the drawing board,” he said about the team’s workouts this week. “Get ourselves back together, get our bodies back together and just get ready for Friday.”
Any team that didn’t make it to the NBA Cup quarterfinals had two extra games added to its schedule. The Cavaliers got a break with two of the easiest added games: one at home against the 3-19 Wizards, followed by a road game against the 10-14 Nets in Brooklyn on Monday.
According to Power Rankings Guru, the Cavaliers have had the easiest schedule in the NBA so far. The schedule will become much tougher going forward, ranking 17th in difficulty among the 30 teams.
Based on past performances this season, starting with the Wizards should make for an easy transition. The Cavaliers easily beat the Wizards 135-116 in Washington during the first week of the season, and then had an even easier time with a 118-87 home win during the NBA Cup.
That victory was part of a four-game winning streak before Sunday’s loss at Miami.
The Wizards, who went 0-4 in the same NBA Cup group as Cleveland, were in the midst of a 16-game losing streak until they surprisingly defeated the Denver Nuggets 122-113 at home last Saturday.
However, Washington returned to their losing ways, getting beaten 140-112 by the Memphis Grizzlies at home on Sunday. Like Cleveland, the Wizards had the last four days off.
As if things couldn’t get worse for Washington, their other extra game is on Sunday at home against the Celtics.
Wizards coach Brian Keefe has experience with losing situations. He was part of the Oklahoma City coaching staff when the Thunder started the 2008-09 season with a 3-29 record. The team made the playoffs the next year and reached the NBA Finals three years later.
“It wasn’t like they just rolled out of bed and were winning 50 or 60 games,” Keefe recalled. “They had to go through some adversity, and I think we used that adversity as a foundation piece for what we were doing there.”
“(The Wizards) are working and developing a work rate and effort and habit-building that’s setting us up for long-term success.”
Friday’s game will feature the NBA’s best 3-point shooting team (Cleveland, at 40.4 percent) against the team that has allowed the fourth-highest 3-point shooting percentage (Washington, at 37.4 percent).
In the first two games against Washington, the Cavaliers outscored the Wizards 102-57 on 3-pointers, with Donovan Mitchell (10-for-19), Sam Merrill (7-for-16), and Garland (6-for-10) scoring 69 of those points.
