Written by Jesse Lamovsky

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After playing competitive basketball at home and on the road in the first twelve games of the season, the Cavaliers have run headlong into the harsh reality of NBA also-ran status. Cleveland suffered its third straight loss and second straight rout Saturday night, an Al Horford-free Hawks team applying a 121-94 whipping in Philips Arena.

Saturday night’s loss was almost a carbon copy of Friday night’s 39-point blistering at the hands of Chicago: non-existent defense, a lack of ball movement, a disastrous first half and a butt-whipping on the boards. Atlanta ripped cord at a 55.4 percent clip, forward Joe Johnson leading the way with 25 points on 10-of-18 shooting. The Hawks shot 46-of-83 on the night, the exact same mark as Chicago the night before.

The Hawks- who at 12-5 are percentage points behind Orlando and Miami in the Southeast Division- were especially lethal in the first half, rolling up 61 points on the way to a 19-point halftime lead. (They didn’t exactly cool off in the second half either, tacking on 60 more in the final twenty-four minutes.) Atlanta went out in front for good on Joe Johnson’s three-pointer with four minutes left in the first period, put the Cavaliers away with an 18-6 run at the end of the half and led by as many as 33 during a victory-lap of a second half.

A characteristic of Cleveland’s three-game losing streak has been a lack of ball movement and an abundance of one-on-one basketball. Atlanta’s 31 assists Saturday are as many as the Cavaliers have had in the last two games combined. Kyrie Irving led his team with 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting but handed out only two assists, giving him a meager five in two games. The rookie committed seven turnovers against the Hawks and showed a propensity to go one-on-five instead of staying within the flow and letting opportunities come to him.

Nor did Irving show much strength on the defensive end. Atlanta’s point guards had a field day, with Jeff Teague and Jannero Pargo combining for 28 points on 11-of-17 shooting with 11 assists and zero turnovers. The rookie might be scoring, but he isn’t getting his teammates involved and he isn’t getting stops.

Israel’s Omri Casspi has had his problems in Cleveland to say the least, and on Saturday once again fared about as well as his home country in a UN General Assembly resolution. Two bad misses by the former Sacramento King- a three-pointer that clanged off the side of the backboard and an open layup that slid off the glass- helped fuel Atlanta’s decisive first-quarter run. Casspi did score 11 points on the night- well above his season average of 7.7- but he didn’t look good getting there.

Saturday’s rebounding numbers were deceptively close. Atlanta’s final edge on the boards was only 36-33, but the Hawks controlled the glass during the competitive portion of the game.

There was one bright spot on this dark night. Rookie Tristan Thompson matched his career high with 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting, bouncing back from a two-game stretch in which he shot a combined 4-of-17. Granted, six of those points were in the rankest of garbage time.

It’s a tightrope. I don’t think anyone should want this Cavalier team to play well enough to qualify for the postseason. A .500 record and a first-round beat-down at the hands of Chicago or (God forbid) Miami won’t be nearly as beneficial in the long run as ping pong balls in the Draft Lottery. When Omri Casspi and Anthony Parker are starting for your team you need more talent, and when you’re Cleveland there’s only one feasible way to acquire it. The Cavaliers need to lose more than they win now in order to win more than they lose later.

The tightrope comes not in the losing- which is expected and to a large extent desirable- but in how the losing happens. Getting beat is one thing. Getting beat down is another, and the Cavaliers have gotten beat down the last two nights, falling to shorthanded Chicago and Atlanta teams by a combined 66 points.

A litany of one-sided losses might get the Cavaliers into Lottery Land, but it can also affect the confidence of the youngsters and hammer the culture of losing deep into this franchise’s DNA (as if this franchise doesn’t have a long history of defeat anyway.) I don’t know if there’s really such thing as being a “competitive” losing team, but at the very least Cleveland at least needs to give itself a chance to win on most nights.  

Next: So much for getting healthy. The reeling Cavaliers will be in Miami to take on LeBron and the Heat Tuesday night at 7:30. Like the Bulls and Hawks, Miami may well be shorthanded- Dwayne Wade missed his third consecutive game Saturday night with an ankle injury and is day-to-day both on Sunday against Milwaukee and Tuesday against Cleveland. It probably won’t matter anyway.