Like all streaks, good or bad, the Cleveland Cavaliers' run had to come to an end

Everything comes to an end. Winning streaks, youth, regimes. Even losing streaks.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have won a game, halting their losing streak at a record 26 games. It had been so long since the Cavaliers had won that they can be excused for reacting, as confetti rained down on them, like they had won their first NBA championship.

They needed overtime to subdue another bad team, the Los Angeles Clippers, by a 126-119 score.

But a win is a win, and it is welcomed like a long-lost friend when you had tasted victory only once in 37 previous games.

Remember, too, that Cleveland won a league-best 61 games last season, back when LeBron James was still in town.

So give it up for the Cavaliers, who have had to endure losing the best player in the game, going from an elite team to a laughingstock, from a team with championship aspirations to the owners of the worst record (9-45) in the NBA.

If the Cavaliers had lost, they would have snapped a tie with the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the longest losing streak in North American professional sports history. At least their new infamy comes with company.

Cleveland received a boost from the return of Mo Williams, the guard who had 17 points and 13 assists.

Daniel Gibson, his teammate, said: "All game long he kept saying, 'We ain't losing this game.' We all had that feeling."

However foreign it might have been.