NEW YORK -- In the grand scheme of things, for a Cleveland Cavaliers team that came into Friday a winner of 28 of its past 34 games over the past nine weeks and still holding a 2½-game lead over the Chicago Bulls for the No. 2 seed in the East with eight games left to play, a 106-98 loss to a Brooklyn Nets team that's suddenly won six out of eight to try to sneak into the playoffs isn't a travesty.
Yes, the Cavs looked as impressive as they have all season in Wednesday's thrashing of the Memphis Grizzlies when they assisted on all 14 of their 14 made field goals in the third quarter. And true, comparatively, they looked rudderless against the Nets, totaling just 17 assists on 37 baskets, turning the ball over 17 times and shooting 8-for-30 from 3 (26.7 percent).
No, the sky isn't falling, but the Cavs aren't too cool as to just throw on their shades and pretend everything is sunny, either.
"We tried to make a late push like we did against Milwaukee, and it just didn't work again," said Kyrie Irving, who scored a game-high 26 points but went just 2-for-6 in the fourth quarter when Brooklyn turned a tie game into an eight-point win. "For us, we got to have that consistency. And we're still finding it. We're finding out a lot about ourselves. But I think that on- and off-switch has to go away pretty soon. We have to continue to be 'on' all the time."
As much as the Cavs' schedule mercifully softens from here on out -- with six of their final eight games at home after they played 15 of their past 20 games on the road -- on the flip side, four of those games, one against the Miami Heat, one against the Milwaukee Bucks and two against the Boston Celtics, will be against teams such as Brooklyn that are fighting for their playoff lives.
In other words, Cleveland has to convince itself that the run it just accomplished isn't close to a crowning achievement and treat this final 10th of the regular-season schedule with the same respect it will give to its first-round playoff opponent.
"We're still not at the finish line," Cavs coach David Blatt said. "We got to get to the first finish line here in a few weeks, so we got to refocus our attention immediately to get back on track. That's what we got to do."
Blatt certainly can't be accused of letting up too soon. He is the guy who kept the Cavs' starters in the game well into the fourth quarter of their blowout of the Memphis Grizzlies because he is hyper-aware of how fickle momentum can be.
The Cavs will regroup with a practice Saturday and dissect how their bench was outscored 54-20 and how they were outrebounded 46-40, including 10-6 on the offensive glass.
And they'll try to turn that ticked-off feeling that permeated the locker room into something they can use to their benefit over the final three weeks of the regular season.
"You don't chalk up losses," LeBron James said when given the option to just flush this one and forget about it. "It's too hard to win in professional sports. You don't chalk up none of it. You see the ways, in the film tomorrow, what you didn't do so well and how you can get better from that. But it's too hard to win in this league to ever chalk up a loss."
Pragmatically, sure, the Cavs are still in great shape, but any satisfaction now is counterproductive to the two-month push they'll need to prepare themselves for if they hope to be the last team standing in June.
"We're disappointed because we have to show up better than that, we have to perform better than that, we have to play harder than that," said James Jones, who always seems to be able to read the pulse of the team. "But, we have to move on. This is a teaching moment. This is a learning moment for us, because as you get closer to the end of the season, some teams will lay down and pack it in, and then other teams, other guys with pride, will come in and play. And we have to be willing to work to continue to play at the level that we played the last two months as we get through the last 10 games of the season, because the human condition is to want to rest, want to lay back, want to take a step back and kind of recharge your mind, but you can't do that if your goal is to win it all."
In a perfect world, the playoff picture would be already cemented and the Cavs could manage the remaining schedule by resting guys intermittently to charge them up for what's to come April 18.
Maybe that day comes with five games left, or four games left. Time will tell.
But for now, the Cavs got a wake-up call courtesy of a Nets team that came in with more to play for.
"For us, it's just a reality check," Jones continued. "This is the NBA, the world's greatest athletes across the way. And if we don't bring our best game, we're vulnerable. We know that. It can be one of the elite teams, it can be one of the more non-competitive teams. But at the end of the day, if we don't come out in the first half and establish our identity, we're vulnerable."