CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs enter the 2025-26 season facing a peculiar motivational challenge: How do you maintain focus and intensity for 82 regular season games when the players themselves already have their eyes set on May?

After securing home-court advantage last season only to lose in the second round of the playoffs, the Cavs face what Jimmy Watkins, cleveland.com columnist, calls a “motivation vacuum” – a lack of compelling reasons to give maximum effort night after night during the regular season.

“A really impressive accomplishment to me, for Kenny this year would be keeping this team engaged and on the tracks during the regular season,” Watkins explained. “This regular season is all about finding new ways to motivate guys. Because as you might have heard a few Cavs players say, it doesn’t mean anything.”

This presents a unique challenge for head coach Kenny Atkinson.

Traditional carrots dangled before NBA teams – winning divisions, securing top seeds, establishing home-court advantage – have been rendered somewhat hollow for this Cleveland squad, which learned the hard way that regular season success doesn’t necessarily translate to playoff victories.

The challenge is compounded by the state of the Eastern Conference, which Watkins bluntly described: “The East sucks. So the Cavs are going to walk into most of these games as, I mean conservatively six, seven-point favorites. There’s more incentive to just go through the motions.”

So how does Atkinson navigate this motivational desert? Wine and Gold Talk podcast host Ethan Sands suggests focusing on specific measurable goals that build toward playoff success.

“My top [goal] for Kenny Atkinson, I think is going to be a top five offense and a top five defense in the NBA,” Sands proposed. “But the overall [necessity] when it comes to that is aggressive mentality, the assertiveness to keep your foot on teams’ necks.”

This aggressive mentality represents a direct response to the team’s playoff shortcomings in their previous three playoff exits, where the Cavaliers often wilted under pressure.

By establishing an identity of mental and physical toughness during the regular season, Atkinson can create an internal motivation that transcends win-loss records.

Watkins suggests another potential focus: developing Evan Mobley into the star the franchise envisions. “The most important player development project maybe in the entire NBA, short of [Victor Wembanyama] and Cooper Flag is Evan Mobley. So do everything you can to empower Evan Mobley.”

Perhaps the most valuable outcome of this regular season would be, counterintuitively, facing genuine adversity.

As Watkins noted, “The Cavs faced essentially zero real adversity last year. And then we saw in the playoffs what happened when they encountered real adversity. They weren’t ready for it.”

A losing streak that tests the team’s resolve, injury challenges that force lineup adjustments, or close games that require clutch execution could benefit this Cavs group, especially with Max Strus and Darius Garland likely to start the season on the injured list.

“The word for this team is maturity,” Sands emphasized. “I think Kenny Atkinson would be extremely happy if that elevated to some degree this season.”

For Atkinson, success this regular season won’t be measured by win totals or seeding. Instead, it will be measured by the team’s mental and emotional growth, their ability to maintain focus despite the absence of immediate rewards, and their development of the toughness needed for playoff battles.

The greatest accomplishment for Atkinson might be transforming a grueling yet somewhat meaningless 82 games into meaningful preparation for the postseason challenges that ultimately define NBA success.

Here’s the podcast for this week:

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