LeBron James scored his 30,000th career point on Tuesday evening, a milestone that is both memorable and wildly impressive. However, that was the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal evening for the Cleveland Cavaliers, which continued a disturbing trend for the defending Eastern Conference champions.
With another loss on the ledger, the Cavs have dropped six of seven and there are real issues within the walls of Quicken Loans Arena. However, Cleveland has been struggling all season long in a particular category and, in short, the team is on an historic pace in that regard. Doug Kezirian of ESPN shed light on Cleveland’s struggles in covering the point spread this season and his reporting indicated that Cleveland entered Tuesday’s game with a dismal 11-33-1 record against the spread on the campaign.
With yet another loss, one more eye-popping and seemingly impossible stat came to the surface, as the Cavs are now 6-29-1 against the spread when entering a game as the favorite.
#Cavs (-2.5) lose and fail to cover again 114-102. They closed with 68% of bets.
Cleveland now 6-29-1 ATS as a favorite this season. pic.twitter.com/dAXewq9KQB
— Action Labs (@ActionLabs_HQ) January 24, 2018
This does not mean that the Cavaliers are the worst team in the NBA, of course, but it does mean that Cleveland has been (by far) the worst team to bet on during the 2017-2018 season. Part of that comes with the inability to live up to expectations and, with every passing day, prospective bettors are likely assuming that a turnaround will arrive. To this point, it has not.
The Cavs did have one tremendous run of success this season, winning 18 of 19 games between Nov. 11 and Dec. 17. Even through that stretch, though, Cleveland was not exactly a “covering” machine with regard to making folks money in Las Vegas (or off-shore) and this trend is beginning to gain steam in a sense of national news.
At some point, the light may come on for LeBron and company and many believe the team is still likely to emerge as the East representative in the NBA Finals. With that said, there will be a lot of people in the handicapping world that will harbor ill will toward the Cavs and, even if they were to rattle off a fantastic run of success, it would only be to crawl toward a reasonable baseline through the prism of a full-season sample.
