{"id":1944998,"date":"2026-05-20T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1944998"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:00:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:00:43","slug":"worst-loss-in-cavaliers-history-if-they-lose-conference-finals-to-the-knicks-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1944998","title":{"rendered":"Worst loss in Cavaliers history? If they lose conference finals to the Knicks, yes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK \u2014 So, worst loss in Cavs history?<\/p>\n

I suppose the answer lies in what ultimately happens in this series. If, somehow, the Cleveland Cavaliers recover against the New York Knicks, then this one will sink to the bottom of the Hudson River.<\/p>\n

But being on the wrong end of the second-largest fourth-quarter comeback in NBA playoff history<\/a>? Sue us if we\u2019re thinking it\u2019s the Cavs with their feet in concrete, plunging into very cold, very dark waters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe (expletive) blew it,\u201d Donovan Mitchell conceded.<\/p>\n

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Yes. In case you turned off Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals with about, oh, 7:41 left, turned your phone off and washed down a sleeping pill, the Cavs\u2019 22-point lead, 93-71, turned into a 115-104 loss<\/a> in overtime to the Knicks.<\/p>\n

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If this is you, if you did this (IT WAS YOU), well, the moment you hit the power button, the Cavs had a 99.9 percent chance to win. Dating to the 1997-98 season, teams trailing by 22 or more points in the fourth quarter were 1-594.<\/p>\n

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It took a 44-11 run by the Knicks to pull off what they just pulled off.<\/p>\n

It was an astonishing collapse by the Cavs, filled with obvious mental errors and physical mistakes, questionable strategies all across the board, a smoking-hot Jalen Brunson and, yes, maybe a lucky bounce here or there in the Knicks\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n

The Cavs seemed to simply allow the Knicks, through Brunson, to target James Harden over and over on defense down the stretch. Brunson scored 15 of his 38 points in the fourth quarter, on 7-of-9 shooting, with only one 3-pointer. Not all those points were scored on Harden, but Cleveland didn\u2019t react nearly fast enough to get Harden help or take him off the floor. The Knicks exploited the matchup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe adjusted to that,\u201d Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said, in a respectful but defiant tone. \u201cWe started sending two at (Brunson), get the ball out of his hands. \u2026 (Harden has) been one of our best defenders in the playoffs. I trust him. Smart, great hands. I didn\u2019t think about (taking him out).\u201d<\/p>\n

Harden was also brutal offensively in the fourth quarter, missing five of his six attempts from the field. Up until Brunson ignited, Mitchell was the best offensive player on the floor. He scored 29 points but was just 1-of-4 in the fourth quarter and didn\u2019t score in overtime. Overall, the Cavs shot just 5-of-17 in the fourth and 1-of-7 in overtime. They committed five turnovers in the final 17 minutes, but those mistakes weren\u2019t nearly as costly as the bad defense and the stagnant offense, with Harden running isolation and missing shot after shot, then being targeted time and again on the other end.<\/p>\n

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The luck \u2014 good if you\u2019re New York, bad if you\u2019re Cleveland \u2014 was a 3-pointer by Landry Shamet that bounced on the rim and in to tie the score with 45 seconds left, and a 3 from Sam Merrill at the buzzer in regulation that rolled around the rim and fell out. The Cavs could\u2019ve just as easily collapsed and still won on that Merrill shot, but it didn\u2019t go down.<\/p>\n

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Beyond that, Atkinson had two timeouts he could\u2019ve used late in the fourth quarter and didn\u2019t. The Cavs have played every other day for more than two weeks now, and Atkinson mentioned fatigue as a factor in the meltdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super proud of the way our group played,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cWe played great basketball tonight for three quarters. Unfortunate fourth quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGot a little unlucky,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Mitchell refused to blame tired legs, or perhaps complacency with such a big lead, as factors in the loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if there was complacency, we\u2019re up 22 with God knows how much time. Eight minutes? Gotta win the game,\u201d Mitchell said, calling it a \u201cbad loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This is the worst of the worst for the Cavs. Go back to the J.R. Smith game, Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, when LeBron James scored 51 points and the Cavs were in prime position to pull the upset. But the Warriors were so heavily favored in the series that, in hindsight, Cleveland wasn\u2019t going to win it, anyway.<\/p>\n

Game 3 of the 2017 finals was a bummer. The wide-open Kyle Korver 3 in the corner that missed, followed by a Kevin Durant dagger, and the Warriors took the game by closing on an 11-0 run. That was a series Cleveland could have made extremely interesting.<\/p>\n

Beyond those two, maybe one of the losses to Boston in 2010, LeBron\u2019s last year with the Cavs before leaving for Miami? Or how about \u201cThe Shot,\u201d from Michael Jordan in 1989? That one ended a series in which the Cavs were actually the higher seed, but it was in the first round.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s the unpleasant company the current Cavs are keeping this morning. And what happened Tuesday at Madison Square Garden stands to be the worst loss in franchise history because, unlike the 2018 finals, Cleveland is not, on the court, a decided underdog. The Knicks are favored, sure, but the Cavs have enough firepower and experience to win the series. Unlike the 2017 finals or the other sad stories mentioned, this was at the start of a series, when Cleveland had every chance to set a specific tone and steal home-court advantage in a series it could otherwise make extremely competitive. And the Cavs just gift-wrapped and hand-delivered to the Knicks a win they had no business getting.<\/p>\n

The only way to kick those lowlights out of their living room is to get off the mat.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the players and coaches were talking about late Tuesday night. Yes, this was bad, but \u2026 \u201cwe could have lost by 40, and we would still be down 1-0,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done it before,\u201d Evan Mobley added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been really good at responding and coming back and bouncing back. So, it\u2019s no different,\u201d Harden said.<\/p>\n

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To be fair, the Cavs have shown a knack for shaking off what you would think is a supreme disappointment and playing the next game like nothing of the sort happened. Something similar happened to the Knicks in Game 1 of the conference finals last year, too. New York was up 17 on the Indiana Pacers in the fourth quarter, only to blow the lead to force overtime, during which Tyrese Haliburton\u2019s bouncing 3-ball won it at the buzzer.<\/p>\n

The Knicks recovered enough to make it a series. The Pacers needed six games to advance to the finals.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to go home happy with the series tied at 1 is still available to the Cavs with a win Thursday in Game 2, but to do it, they will have to not only wash from their mouths the bitter taste of such a catastrophic defeat but also actively learn to avoid letting the Knicks exploit their deficiencies in crunch time.<\/p>\n

If they fail to do either, then what you just witnessed was, likely, the worst loss in Cavs history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 So, worst loss in Cavs history? I suppose the answer lies in what ultimately happens in this series. If, somehow, the Cleveland Cavaliers recover against the New York Knicks, then this one will sink to the bottom of the Hudson River. But being on the wrong end of the second-largest fourth-quarter comeback […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1944998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1944998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1944998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1944998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1944998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}