The Cavaliers have lost 2 straight. Is it just a ‘bump in the road’ or a test?

LOS ANGELES — The Cleveland Cavaliers have lost two games in a row. More shouldn’t be ruled out, and we need to be able to talk about it.

We need to be fair to the bigger picture and to tip caps toward the opponents; those guys are getting paid too. We should be able to point out what isn’t going right in the moment without turning the criticisms into something larger than they are.

Can we do this? Ha, I guess we’ll see.

The facts: Cleveland dropped its second straight game Tuesday night with a 132-119 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers at the start of a five-game western swing. To get to 70 regular-season wins, the Cavs (56-12) would have to win their final 14 games, which sounds preposterous except they’ve already had two winning streaks longer than that.

But 70 is just a number (a big number — only two teams in the NBA’s 77 years have won that many). Cleveland is up by 6 1/2 games on Boston for first place (and therefore, homecourt advantage through the Eastern Conference bracket) and is highly unlikely to blow that lead. If the Cavs come even close to that, we’ll be having much harder discussions.

As it stands, Cleveland and Oklahoma City are tied for the NBA’s best record, which only matters if both teams reach the finals.

“You want to be healthy and playing the right way. If that comes with it then, yeah, (clinching the No. 1 overall seed matters),” Cavs star Donovan Mitchell said. “We’re competitors, and we want to be the best of the best. But at the end of the day we want to be healthy, playing the right way and taking these tests, and if we don’t (finish ahead of Oklahoma City), then we don’t.”

So if that’s true, if the chase for the NBA’s best record is really just a road sign on the way to a grander destination, then the Cavs don’t have much else to play for until mid-April. It’s like an extended spring training, where pitchers are working on their breaking pitches, even in fastball counts, and position players are getting two or three at-bats in five or six innings before giving way to the minor leaguers.

I was about to say that perhaps the above analogy is a bit of a stretch, but then I remembered even Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said he was tinkering with lineups against the Clippers. He has earned the luxury to do so by piloting this team to the giant cushion they have over the rest of the East, just like his players have earned the right to be totally calm after choking away a lead at the start of the fourth quarter for the first time all season on Sunday against the Orlando Magic, and then getting absolutely pounded on the boards Tuesday against the Clippers.

In Sunday’s home loss to the Magic, the Cavs missed 56 shots overall and 30 3s. They were throwing in-bounds passes off the sides of backboards and handing balls to Wendell Carter Jr. On Tuesday night in Los Angeles, the Clippers collected 49 rebounds to their 29. Ivica Zubac devastated the Cavs’ two All-Star-caliber bigs (to be fair to them, though, the Cavs switch on defense, so really Zubac was picking on everyone), and finished with 28 points and 20 rebounds. Kawhi Leonard looked like ol’ Kawhi (33 points, line-drive 3s, claws for hands), James Harden controlled the game despite a poor shooting night (nine assists, 11 foul shots) and Bogdan Bogdanovic made all eight of his shots for 20 points.

Cleveland, meanwhile, mustered just 17 points and shot 1-of-13 on 3s in the fourth quarter — a period that began with the Cavs down by just four points.

“They played great — elite shot-making performance by them,” Atkinson said. “Poor defensive by us. … Our lack of discipline fouling them, putting them on the line, and giving them second-chance points. They did have an elite shot-making game, but we weren’t disciplined and didn’t do the things on the margins.

“That kind of performance can’t survive in a playoff atmosphere, a playoff situation.”

You may remember, we discussed last week that this might happen. Time was running out for the Cavs to face mettle-forging adversity before the playoffs start, and now, perhaps, some is brewing. If they choose to view this two-game slide that way.

Atkinson said the two losses, and the schedule at large, as they play again Wednesday in Sacramento, “isn’t such a bad thing for us.” He said the Cavs have “great character and leadership,” are resilient, and he expects them to “bounce back.” They have done it all season, as this is only the third time all year in which they have lost consecutive games and the first time since late January when they dropped three straight. Because of their sustained dominance, however, they could go out against the Kings on Wednesday and make the same mistakes, lose again, and it still wouldn’t necessarily ring alarm bells. The idea is to play well enough, to be engaged enough, to keep things from getting to the point where those chimes of concern begin to sound.

Mitchell missed two games with a minor groin injury. In his first two games back, both losses, he’s shot 14 of 46. He scored 18 points with 11 assists on Tuesday. Evan Mobley, whose emergence as an offensive force has elevated the Cavs to legitimate title contenders, missed Sunday’s game and scored 17 points against the Clippers, but he didn’t have quite the same effect he normally has on defense. Cleveland was outscored by 19 while Mitchell was on the floor and by 27 when Mobley was out there.

“A little bump in the road here, but again … the Clippers had a lot to do with what happened tonight,” Atkinson said.

Yes, the Clippers and the Magic both have much more to play for right now than Cleveland. Both are Play-In teams trying to secure postseason berths and stronger seeding options by any means possible.

Unless the Cavs want to make an arbitrary number of regular-season victories as important as I keep making it out to be (seriously, I’ve been yammering about 70 for weeks now, enough already), or decide that they must hold off the Thunder for the No. 1 overall seed, then the last month of the season is one long ramp up for what they hope is a magnificently deep playoff run.

That’s when they will want to be playing their best. They aren’t playing terribly now, but it could be better.

“I know everything is under a microscope right now since we’ve been on our run,” said Darius Garland, who scored 17 points with eight assists against the Clippers. “So, two losses, it’s the same two losses as any other team. It’s basketball — everybody loses, everybody wins.”

Yes, normal NBA teams lose a few here and there. The 2024-25 Cavs haven’t been normal for much of the season, and they have a few weeks to return to their atypical league dominance.

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(Top photo of Donovan Mitchell: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)