Cavalier suffer an embarrassing loss to the Atlanta Hawks, 114-100

The Cleveland Cavaliers followed up their most impressive performance of the season with their most embarrassing effort, falling at home to the bench squad of the Atlanta Hawks, 114-100 on Friday night at the Q.

The Atlanta Hawks played without their entire starting lineup-all on the bench due to injury or rest.

"Obviously a bad performance," coach Tyronne Lue said. "To beat Boston and have the game that we had and to come back and not validate it against a team that didn't even play their guys. I didn't think we respected them tonight. I thought we thought we'd just mess around with the game until it was time to knuckle down.

"By that time they already had confidence. That's who we've been. That's who we are. I hate it."

James led the Cavs with 27 points on 12-of-15 shooting from the field, adding eight rebounds and seven assists.

"As a group our energy was very low," James said. "I have no idea why, but it was just low."

Love added 15 points and 15 rebounds, his 39th double-double this season but shot 6-of-17. Irving finished with 18 points and seven assists, and was hobbling around on a sore left knee. Channing Frye scored 16 points and grabbed five rebounds.

"We were ready to play, but the effort just wasn't there," Kyrie Irving said. "The lack of execution on the defensive end was the most frustrating part."

In the final quarter, the Cavaliers took an 87-85 lead with just over nine minutes left, but over the next eight minutes , the Hawks put the game away with a 29-13 run.

This was a pathetic effort by the Cavaliers all the way around. The Hawks planned to lose ahead of time and were practically given the Cavaliers an easy win, BUT the Cavaliers' lack of focus costs them this game. The Cavaliers flipped the switch off again.

The Cavs had a four-game win streak snapped and their lead over Boston for first place in the East is 1.0 games with three to play. The Cavs' magic number to clinch is two.

In conjunction with the home win over the Celtics on Thursday, the undermanned Hawks defeated the top two teams in the Eastern Conference on back-to-back nights.

The Atlanta Hawks kept their hold on the fifth spot in the conference with three games remaining. Tim Hardway Jr. paced the Hawks with 22 points. Mike Dunleavy, whom the Cavs traded to Atlanta on Jan. 7 for Kyle Korver, scored 20 off the bench.

COMING UP FOR THE CAVS: The Cleveland Cavaliers (51-28) and the Atlanta Hawks (41-38) play again Sunday, this time in Atlanta at 3:30 p.m.