DALLAS — Call them an early-season disappointment. Brand them defensively challenged. Take it a step snarkier and dismiss them as creaky — or even flat-out old.

None of that noise is bound to get a reaction out of LeBron James the way accusing the Cleveland Cavaliers of falling prey to boredom does.

“I don’t even know where that comes from,” James said.

Here’s where: It’s a reflex reaction for pro basketball pundits, when a championship-level team starts the season as listlessly as the Cavaliers did, to suggest that the relative dullness and lack of consequence attached to games at the front of the N.B.A. calendar leads to the dearth of sharpness we’ve seen from a franchise overwhelmingly favored to represent the Eastern Conference in the finals for the fourth successive year.

But James, on the morning before a road victory at lowly Dallas that raised the Cavaliers’ record to a pedestrian 6-7, took issue with the suggestion that a shortfall in urgency, effort or any other code word you wish to apply to convey insufficient interest in their jobs caused Cleveland’s recent 1-4 stretch against a string of teams projected to miss the playoffs.