The Cleveland Cavaliers have a very busy week with four games slated, and fortunately for the underperforming Cavs at least two of those games are against lower level teams. The Cavs do have a long way to go to catch up to the Indiana Pacers and Chicago Bulls with a mediocre 5-6 record, but a strong week on the backs of the loss to the Lakers should perk up the team a bit. We're in a new era of Cleveland basketball after all, so the expectation of losing should vanish with some strong games, specifically by rookie Kyrie Irving.
The week starts off early against the Charolette Bobcats at 2 PM EST on Monday. You may have heard that the Bobcats aren't doing all that well right now. Though they beat the Golden State Warriors in their last game, they're still only 3-10 on the season and are just playing flat out bad basketball. Tuesday they play a team so bad that they actually lost to Charlotte, the aforementioned Warriors. At 4-8 they're not all that much better, though they are also coming off a win against the Detroit Pistons.
Sadly, the centipede doesn't continue with Cleveland playing Detroit next, instead pitting the Cavs against the Central division leading Chicago Bulls on Friday at 7:30. The Bulls are just as good as they were supposed to be going into the season, and at 12-2 haven't lost in six games. Fortunately the game is in Cleveland and the Bulls certainly aren't invincible -- they dropped a game to Golden State of all teams earlier in the year -- and with two winnable matchups beforehand for Cleveland there might be some momentum on the Cavs' side as well.
The final game of the week on Saturday is against the 9-4 Atlanta Hawks. The record is good but the Cavs may have a bit of an advantage since the Hawks are a bit banged up right now injury-wise. It's not incredibly hard to see Cleveland making it out of this week with a 3-1 record, which will boost them above .500 once again. In this shortened season every win counts even more than usual, especially in the traditionally weaker Eastern Conference.
For more on the Cavs, check out Fear The Sword.