It’s like a broken record, Cavaliers keep losing and losing

At some point, you either laugh or cry.

Casey Stengel took the comical route when he managed the famously awful 1962 New York Mets.

“The only thing worse than a Mets game,” he said, “is a Mets doubleheader.”

John McKay similarly joked his way through the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ first two seasons as a woeful expansion franchise.

Asked about his team’s execution on the field, he quipped: “I think it’s a good idea.”

But in Cleveland this season, the Cavaliers seem to have lost their sense of humor — along with 26 consecutive games.

Cleveland, which faces the Clippers at Quicken Loans Arena on Friday night, has become a punch line for late-night talk shows and stands on the brink of setting a new measure for ineptitude in American professional sports.

Twenty-seven consecutive losses would push the Cavaliers past the Buccaneers at 26, past the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies, who hold baseball’s modern-era record of 23, and way past the 1974-75 Washington Capitals and 1992-93 San Jose Sharks, who share the NHL record at 17.

“The biggest thing right now is you’ve got to challenge their pride,” an exasperated Coach Byron Scott told reporters after his team lost to Detroit on Wednesday.

“We’ve got all professional basketball players in there,” he said. “And at some point you’ve got to have pride in what you’re doing.”

The LeBron James fiasco goes a long way toward explaining why the Cavaliers have a league-worst 8-45 record, slipping so far from last season, when they reached the Eastern Conference semifinals.

James broke the city’s heart and left the team in shambles when he decided to take his talents to South Beach to play for the Miami Heat. Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Shaquille O’Neal are gone. Anderson Varejao suffered a season-ending ankle injury in January.

That left veteran Antawn Jamison, a two-time All-Star in 12 NBA seasons, leading such younger players as J.J. Hickson and Ramon Sessions.

Other teams on the all-time losers list suffered from a similar lack of star power.

The Buccaneers of the mid-1970s came along before free agency and before the league took extra steps to help new franchises acquire quality players in a hurry.

The ’62 Mets were also an expansion club, and management made the mistake of bringing aboard too many older players from around the league.

But prolonged losing streaks can be more complicated. In Cleveland, a recent comment by guard Daniel Gibson suggests something else at work.

“I think losing is contagious,” he said. “That happens sometimes.”

As the defeats pile up, every facet of a team’s performance can suffer, said Leonard Zaichkowsky, a sports psychologist who works as the director of sports science for the Vancouver Canucks.

Players start to doubt their own abilities, tensing up and playing even worse. Teammates stop believing in one another, which in basketball hurts passing and team defense.

Coaches can also catch the bug.

“A player makes one mistake and he gets yanked,” Zaichkowsky said. “Everyone’s walking around on pins and needles.”

Fans tend to have little patience with losing teams if only because they are populated by grown men paid extravagant amounts of money.

“But they’re just like the kids playing at 17 or 18 years old — they have the same self-doubts,” Zaichkowsky said. “I’ve been around enough pro athletes to see how fragile they can be.”

There is no simple cure.

Teams can start by ignoring criticism in the media, the boos raining down from the stands. They have to think small — focusing on fundamentals, breaking games into smaller pieces, trying to win one quarter at a time.

In his first season in Cleveland, Scott seems to be taking that approach. Having arrived at the worst possible time, he talks about being more aggressive in finding mid-range jump shots and taking the ball to the basket.

“I could care less about the record,” Scott told reporters this week. “I care about our guys progressing and getting better … we’ve just got to keep pounding the pavement.”

One victory can break the cycle, and the Cavaliers came close this month, playing tough against Memphis and Portland, losing by three points at Dallas.

But then came a 103-94 defeat against the shaky Pistons, Cleveland’s 36th loss in 37 games.

“I think we took a gigantic step backward,” Scott said. “It was all because of a lack of effort.”

Now comes an opponent that knows a thing or two about tough times.

The 1994-95 Clippers started with a 16-game losing streak on their way to a 17-65 record.

The current team is on a long trip that included big losses to Miami and Orlando before a victory Wednesday night over the New York Knicks.

The Cavaliers seem to understand that, to win for the first time since before Christmas, they need hard work. They need to keep the game close into the fourth quarter and, as Scott put it, “get over the hump.”

But right now, there are more questions than answers for a team that is making the wrong kind of history.

“Sometimes,” Gibson said, “it’s hard to believe.”

david.wharton@latimes.com

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