CLEVELAND — The best team in the NBA was beaten handily at home and held to under 100 points for the first time all season, two bad signs as the Cavaliers head out on a dangerous road trip.

The Indiana Pacers are hot, too, but they are just the second team this season to beat the Cavs in their building, claiming a 108-93 victory Sunday to snap Cleveland’s 12-game winning streak. Andrew Nembhard led the Pacers with 19 points and Darius Garland scored a team-high 20 for the Cavs.

The Cavs are still the NBA’s top team at 33-5, but if they want to stay on top, they’d better refocus straight away. They have a rematch with the Pacers in Indianapolis on Tuesday, followed by a much-anticipated second round with the Oklahoma City Thunder (32-6), who are just one game behind Cleveland for the best overall record and will be looking for revenge following a narrow loss to the Cavs last week.

“It happens, 82 games in a season is super long,” Garland said. “Some days you have one of these games. I mean, we went an entire month without a loss, we were due for one.”

The loss dropped Cleveland to 20-2 at home. The Cavs’ last loss at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse was Nov. 27 against the Atlanta Hawks.

The Pacers won without star point guard Tyrese Haliburton, who missed the entire second half with left hamstring tightness. Haliburton scored just two points in 19 minutes. Pascal Siakam scored 18 points with nine rebounds for Indiana and Myles Turner added 15 points and 10 boards.

This was a 15-point game in Cleveland’s favor early in the third quarter. The Pacers got back in it with relentless ball pressure that began well before halfcourt and closed the third on a 32-10 run. The Cavs went more than seven minutes without a field goal. The Pacers won the rebounding battle, 50-44, despite the Cavs’ presence of two All-Star-caliber bigs in Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley. Indiana also sped up Cleveland by transforming the Cavs’ 13 turnovers into 20 points.

Andrew Nembhard from WAY downtown to beat the shot clock 🚨 pic.twitter.com/KiJa6113s7

— Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) January 13, 2025

Indiana is not necessarily known for its defense — ranked 21st entering Sunday – and the Cavs entered with the league’s top-rated offense, best overall shooting percentage and best 3-point shooting percentage.

Not only did the Pacers hold the Cavs to, by far, their lowest point total of the season (the previous low was 101 in a second loss to Atlanta, that one an NBA Cup game, on Nov. 29), but Cleveland shot just 40 percent from the field and 27 percent from 3 on Sunday.

“It’s one game. We gotta play these guys again in two days. That’s a major, major challenge,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “I just thought our connectivity in the second half was as good as it’s been all year. And it has to be against a team of this level, in a building with this kind of atmosphere.”

Indiana (22-18) has won six straight and seven of its last eight. Carlisle said he didn’t know much about Haliburton’s injury beyond the initial diagnosis of hamstring tightness.

Before Sunday’s game, Carlisle said the Cavs were a team with no weaknesses, but the Pacers share a trait with the Hawks and Boston Celtics (two of the three other teams to beat Cleveland this year). Indiana has perimeter defenders who are long and quick — a combination that has bothered the Cavs.

Donovan Mitchell added 19 points to Garland’s 20, but the two All-Star caliber guards combined to shoot 14-of-33. The Cavs’ bench was blown out, outscored by 18 with some ugly plus-minus numbers. For instance, Cleveland was outscored by 23 with Max Strus on the court and by 19 when Caris LeVert was out there.

DG being DG. 🔥

VOTE DARIUS: https://t.co/0gYVvMs7MX@Kia | #BestToTheBay pic.twitter.com/4USNGHUZIJ

— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) January 13, 2025

“I think the easy out for us would be, you know, we didn’t make shots,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. “It’s happened two or three times all year. What disappointed me was, in the first half we were phenomenal defensively, and in the second half we just fell off. We couldn’t sustain our defense. The shots — we live with days like that, nights like that, but just disappointed (with) our defensive mindset in that third quarter and really the whole second half.”

Cleveland finishes its tough trip at Minnesota (20-18) on Saturday. The Cavs passed most tests this season with ease (or at least made them look easy). Their last road trip around the holidays was a flawless 4-0 trek out West.

The Cavs remain on pace to win 71 games this season, which would easily be a franchise record and the third-most wins in league history. They also insist they are using the regular season to set themselves up for a deep playoff run, rather than to chase history as an all-time great regular-season team.

There is no reason they couldn’t do both, but Cleveland is a franchise that believes in load management and will likely prioritize rest for top players when the schedule gets hectic. The Cavs are deep and have six players averaging at least 10 points, so they are equipped to win on nights when Mitchell or Garland gets a breather.

Cleveland has earned the benefit of patience, and of waving off one bad night as just that — a rare tough game amidst one of the greatest (to date) regular seasons in NBA history. If there is any reason to look for, but not ring, the alarm bell, it would be that the Cavs were beaten as such by the Pacers with such a potentially difficult road trip looming.

“You always want to learn through wins,” Mitchell said. “When you (lose), you kind of look back and figure out what’s going on. But we’ve done a lot of positive things and to have this one thing — it’s always good to learn. It’s always good to have these moments. To have this happen before the road trip, we could say it’s good for us, but for us, I think it’s just a matter of locking back in and doing what we do, and we’ll be fine.”

Required reading

(Photo: Ken Blaze / Imagn Images)