It’s been a tale of two teams with the Cleveland Cavaliers this season.
They were either the most or the second-most dominant team for most of the regular season, but they haven’t been at their best over the past two or three weeks.
Of course, it’s normal to see teams take the intensity down a couple of notches after clinching a playoff spot, as health is of the utmost importance in the playoffs.
However, we’ve also seen teams lose all their groove and rhythm once they start resting or going through the motions.
That’s why Ethan Sands of Cleveland.com believes that the Cavs are actually their own worst enemy right now.
In his latest column, the renowned analyst claimed that the biggest threat to the team’s championship aspirations weren’t the Boston Celtics or the Oklahoma City Thunder but their approach to the final regular-season games:
“And yet, here comes the irony: The biggest threat to the Cavs’ championship aspirations isn’t the Celtics or the Thunder, it’s the invisible tug-of-war between rhythm and rest,” Sands wrote “This is the final test of Kenny Atkinson’s regular-season masterpiece — a delicate balancing act that no analytics model can fully decode.”
We’ve seen this happen over and over.
Some teams barely sneak into the playoffs, but they still manage to go deep into the postseason because they’ve been taking every game as a postseason contest for the last month or so.
On the other side of the spectrum, the best teams in the league have often struggled to get back to their best because they’ve been taking things lightly for weeks.
Then again, we’ve also seen teams benefit from the additional rest, but that’s usually something that happens to teams stacked with multiple stars.
There’s no proven formula to consider in these situations, and only time will tell how they will fare and whether they took the right approach.
NEXT: Kenny Atkinson Raves About Cavs' Training Staff
