So perhaps I put way too much stock in history. My prior work on this site has more than once borne witness to that. But history is a good thing to hold onto, and if it can give a sports team a little incentive, so much the better.
The Cavaliers have already entered the history books once this season, with their dreadful 26-game losing streak. It is hard to remember the time when they were 7-9 and two games away from their first match-up with LeBron James.
That seems so long ago now, and there have been only six more wins in all that time. The mind almost boggles.
And Cleveland will probably set another negative standard in this 2010-11 season. No team in the history of the NBA has gone from best record one season to worst record the next. I touched on that in my preview to the Nets' game the other day. Another loss followed. Cleveland would need something resembling a hot streak now to avoid the first-to-worst place in the history books.
Hard to see that happening, isn't it?
All of this isn't even the history I was alluding to at the beginning of this column, however. I was thinking more of a vacuum of dreadfulness, not one team's performance matched against all the other teams in either a losing streak or a first-to-worst, but in the vacuum of an individual team's all-time worst record.
Twice in their history the Cavaliers have finished 15-67. Once was in their inaugural season of 1970-71; the second time was in 1981-82.
With twelve games to go, Cleveland needs two more wins to match those two marks of futility.
Two wins in twelve games? Should be cake, right?
Don't pass out the forks just yet.
Tonight the Cavaliers welcome the Detroit Pistons to the Q. Detroit comes in at 25-46, losers of two straight and seven of their past ten games. In the LeBron years, once could just about count on a win when facing the crew from Motown at home. But not anymore. Even though Detroit has won only seven games on the road all season, such stats don't mean a whole lot nowadays. Why just the other day I was writing about how the New Jersey Nets had only four road wins on the entire campaign. Of course, that did not stop the Nets from adding number five away from home at Cleveland's expense.
When you look at the remaining schedule for Cleveland you think "Why, surely they could win this one, and this one too". You would have also thought that about the New Jersey game...
C'mon Cavs, let's get those two more wins. And getting two begins with getting one.
No time like the present -- to try to better the worst of the past.