Why Cleveland went so badly this season.

Coming into the season Cleveland’s best player on the roster could have been one of these three: Mo Williams, Anderson Varejao or Antawn Jamison. Not looking too good on paper, but I don’t think anybody would have guessed it would as bad as a 26 game losing streak and becoming the laughing stock of the NBA. But it did and here are 3 reasons why.

Inconsistency

All Cavs fan will agree with me on this, Cleveland couldn’t sting together at least 5 solid outings this season. If we won it was great but if we lost it was a disaster (in most cases.) A perfect example of the Cavs inconsistency this season was the team’s final west-coast road trip of the season. After a great win in Sacramento, the Cavs came out a couple of nights later and let Portland run out to a 24-2 lead in the first quarter, eventually turning into a 111-70 loss. The team never showed us that they were capable of going on a winning streak. Cleveland only had one winning streak this season, 3 wins in a row in early November 2010.

Injuries

As I stated before, coming into the season the Cavs three best players were Mo Mo, Andy V and ‘Tawn. What do you know; all three of these guys got injured at some stage this season, missing long periods of time. Cleveland eventually parted ways with Mo sending him to Blake and Co in LA for Baron Davis and the Clippers 2011 1^st round pick...which shouldn’t turn out so bad. Anderson Varejao is no all star in this league, but is Cleveland’s energiser bunny. He rebounds, plays defence and is a never give-up hustle guy. Losing him early in the season was a huge blow as many of the Cavs loses came on the defensive end this season. Antawn is the Cavs leading scorer this season (18ppg) and losing your leading scorer really shakes up a team. When he went down, someone had to step up....no one did and you can see the results....at least he got injured late in the season.

No Heart

Many times thought-out the season, Coach Bryon Scott questioned this teams heart, for good reason. So many lost games this season came down to players not diving on the floor for free balls, rebounding, hustle plays and just simply not looking like they care. The lost to the Heat (LeBron’s return) on Dec 2 was our biggest match of the home and away season.....we lost by 28 points and LBJ played one of his better games of the season. A 55 point loss to the Lakers is some more evidence, just if you need any. No heart=bad basketball. Cleveland learnt the hard way.