Should the Cavs look to the OKC Thunder as a barometer of their success?

After that Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the sliding Portland Trail Blazers on Dec. 3, Donovan Mitchell went off on a tangent. He was blunt about the Cavs’ approach to the season and how there are no excuses for their inconsistencies, referring to the Oklahoma City Thunder’s historic start after winning the NBA Finals.

“OKC won the championship,” Mitchell said after last Wednesday’s loss in Portland. “I’m not comparing us to them, but they’re 20-1 or whatever. There’s an urgency around the league, and we want to be that. We want to be at that level. I don’t know anybody’s record, but that’s what stands out. We want to be that championship team.”

The Thunder have picked up four more wins since then, starting 24-1 and awkwardly topping the league. Their most recent win was a 138-89 drubbing of the Phoenix Suns in the Emirates NBA Cup on Wednesday night.

One day removed from OKC’s win, ClutchPoints asked the Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson if he paid attention to the defending champion when setting the standard he wants in Cleveland.

“If you do that in the NBA, I think you’re going to go crazy if you start looking at other teams and what they’re doing,” Atkinson said after Thursday’s practice. “I’ve got to be focused on us. I look at our metrics, our KPIs (key performance indicators). I looked at it the other day, I think we’re on the borderline of the top-10 in both offensive (efficiency) and (defensive efficiency). It’s not like, ‘Oh, shoot, we’re 26th in this and this.'” So there are some real positives here.

“We’re not where we want to be, but we’re not far behind. So I think there are some positive signs. We’re looking at all the expected things as well, so it allows us to check our processes; those numbers are pretty good. That doesn’t mean I’m happy with where we are, but I think there are positive signs that we’re on a trend that we’re getting better, and we’re continuing to get better.”

It makes sense that Atkinson doesn’t want to look elsewhere to boost Cleveland because the motivation has to be internal. That said, the Thunder prove that championship habits can be passed on despite the notion that there can be a hangover from previous champions.

Atkinson’s Cavs didn’t continue their best-performing week off in the nation’s capital, narrowly escaping with a 130-126 comeback victory over the struggling, three-game winning streak Washington Wizards. That demanded Mitchell’s hero for the umpteenth time this season.

“You don’t go out and solve it just because you had five days off,” Mitchell said after Friday’s game. “It’s one of those things where you’ve got to keep chipping away, you’ve got to keep doing all the little things, all the little things. That’s what it took to win (Friday). We found a way. Now, can we do it over and over again? Not really to be on everybody else’s timeline, but on our timeline. Keep building.

“We’ve got to keep going every night. We can’t look around the league and compare ourselves. No. We’ve got to be the best we can be every night. We’re not there yet. Obviously, yes, we’re injured, but I don’t use that as an excuse. We’ve got enough in this locker room, and we’ve got to keep getting better in this group. in March right before the playoffs.”

The Cavs are 15-11 with plenty of winnable games ahead of sub-.500 teams in this upcoming stretch. The Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls will be their opponents in the next four contests. It will be most important for wine and gold to win and return to their identity, as this is the main opportunity to right the ship.