CLEVELAND — Last January, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ win over the Oklahoma City Thunder seemed to signal the arrival of a new era. It was an official announcement to the league that their team, powered by two undersized, dynamic guards and defensive-oriented bigs, wasn’t just a gimmick. They teased that they could win on the biggest stage and just needed to wait until the spring to officially prove it.

Looking back a year later, after the Thunder humiliated the Cavs with a 32-point beatdown on Monday, it’s fair to wonder if that Jan. 2025 win wasn’t the arrival of the core-four era, but the high point before the gradual, steady decline.

The difference between the Thunder and Cavs from a talent standpoint was stark. Cleveland had one player in their starting lineup who could break down the defense off-the-dribble and very few reliable shooters around him. The Thunder dared Cleveland’s bigs — Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen — to beat them inside, which they couldn’t consistently do.

Defensively, the Thunder showed what a team that prioritizes that end of the floor should look like. They were consistently in passing lanes forcing turnovers, and made it incredibly difficult to finish anything at the rim. This stood in contrast to a Cavs team that was forced to cheat off of one of Oklahoma City’s weaker shooters to make good contests at the rim. This came back to bite them as the Thunder converted nearly 50% of their three-point attempts.

In many ways, the Thunder were the complete, defensive-first, well-oiled machine led by an MVP candidate guard and dynamic, modern big that the Cavs were hoping to be when they first put this core together four years ago.

Last year, it felt like that was a possibility. This season, it seems like a fantasy. Where did the Cavs go wrong?

The Thunder have a style of play they want to enforce every time they go on the court, regardless of who’s in the lineup. That’s instilled through years of targeting guys who have certain physical and mental traits. And once those players are in the organization, they’re meticulously taught how to fit into that system.

The Cavs, conversely, don’t have a certain type of player or style that they’ve targeted. Their core four players of Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen were each brought in on moves that targeted the best available player. There wasn’t a shared skill or personality trait that led to them eventually becoming Cavaliers.

Acquiring talent is the number one goal of a front office. From that perspective, Cleveland’s has been successful. Figuring out how to get that talent to play a cohesive style has been a much more difficult process.

The Cavs went all in on defense, anchored by their oversized front court and hard-nosed coach J.B. Bickerstaff. Then, they found out defense wasn’t enough as their offense fell flat in their 2023 playoff series loss to the New York Knicks. They then pivoted to prioritize the offensive side of the ball with shooters that summer in Max Strus, Georges Niang, and Ty Jerome.

The Cavaliers took another step towards being an offensive team by hiring head coach Kenny Atkinson in 2024. He transformed Cleveland into a movement-based offense that prioritized the three-ball. This worked, until they fell in the playoffs to the Indiana Pacers.

Instead of continuing down that path, Cleveland pivoted again by trying to find well-rounded players who can handle the ball and switch defensively with Lonzo Ball and Larry Nance Jr. Both have struggled mightily this season, but the issue remains the same.

There isn’t an overarching guiding principle about what a Cavalier player is or what skills they should have. Instead, it’s been a revolving door of different skillsets, each brought in as a reaction to what went wrong during the previous postseason.

This has culminated in this current team that hasn’t found an identity despite being over halfway through the season. They don’t have the personnel to be the defensive-first team they were three years ago, and they also don’t have the shooting that resulted in them being one of the best regular-season offenses of all-time last year. They’re a bad hybrid of both ideas and lack the consistent principles or fundamentals to hang their hat on anything.

The Cavs still have time to right the ship. There’s enough talent on the roster — when healthy — to climb the standings over the back-half of the season and make a postseason run. But there presumably isn’t enough time to cobble together an identity with these disparate and underperforming pieces to make the title run that seemed possible coming into the season.

The individual loss on Monday wasn’t that big of a deal. The Cavs had their worst outside shooting night of the season, while the Thunder had one of their best. That’s generally going to lead to a blowout loss, no matter the skill level of your opponent.

The issue comes from the different processes that led both teams to this point. The Thunder, without two starters, were a team that clearly knew who they were, what they wanted to be, and were disciplined enough to execute their gameplan. Their process was flawless. Conversely, the Cavs weren’t able to function without their starting point guard, had no one who could come close to replicating that missing skill, and didn’t have anything to fall back on.

It’s easier to point out problems than it is to fix them. There isn’t a magic bullet or trade that is guaranteed to get the Cavs back on track. All we know is that the gap between the reigning champs and the team that was on their level at this time last season is wider than it’s been in years. And the Cavs are running out of time to close it.