Bob Cook

Along the way to the inevitable Detroit-Miami Eastern Conference finals matchup, the New Jersey Nets and the Cleveland Cavaliers have put together winning streaks that make that pairing seem not quite so inevitable.

That is, if not for the fact that each team’s season-long streakiness makes a first-round flameout as possible as a long run.

A first-round loss to sub-.500 and struggling Milwaukee sounds far-fetched for New Jersey, and even a playoff-inexperienced team such as Cleveland (no playoff appearances since 1998) should have no trouble with Washington. After all, each team is certainly getting hot at the right time.

New Jersey has locked down Detroit, Miami, Dallas and Phoenix in winning 15 of its last 16 games — tying the franchise record of 14 straight victories along the way. The Nets’ lone loss in that period came at home April 8 against the Cavaliers, who used a late-game 12-1 run for a 108-102 victory, part of a current string of 10 wins in 11 games.

But New Jersey and Cleveland are like the old saw about Midwestern weather — stick around five minutes, and it’ll change.

New Jersey’s recent 14-game winning streak — tying the mark set in 2004 during the first 14 games of coach Lawrence Frank’s tenure — was its second 10-plus-game winning streak of the season. The Nets are the only team to accomplish such a feat. Yet thanks to six losing streaks of three games or more, they are only the third seed in the Eastern Conference, at 47-29.

New Jersey is 2-2 against Detroit and 3-1 against Miami, but it has found ways to lose to other not-so-great teams; in one West Coast trip, it lost at Utah, the Los Angeles Clippers, Portland and Seattle, with only the Clippers a playoff-caliber team. Before the Nets started their winning streak, they lost five out of six games, including at home to staggering Indiana, and on the road to bottom-feeders Atlanta and Minnesota.

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Cleveland opened this season with nine wins in 11 games, and followed by losing seven out of nine. After that losing string, the Cavaliers won nine out of 11 again. Then they lost six straight. Then they lost seven straight. Before the recent 10-wins-out-of-11-game string, the Cavaliers had, counting backward, lost three straight, won four straight and lost five straight. The Cavaliers, at 46-30, have clinched the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference.

By comparison, top-seeded Detroit has not lost more than two games in a row, and second-seeded Miami has lost four games in a row once, and otherwise no more than two in a row.

While New Jersey and Cleveland have similar records built upon wild momentum swings, they are opposites when it comes to why those swings occur.

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New Jersey’s ability to defend dictates its streaks. New Jersey has given up only 83.4 points during its 15-1 run, while it gave up 99.8 points while losing the previous five out of six — a pattern similar to earlier swings. Overall, New Jersey averages 93.9 points per game, in the NBA’s bottom 10, and gives up 92.2, in the NBA’s top 10.

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