CLEVELAND, Ohio -- January is over the Cavaliers (OK, it's over for everyone).

It was a bad month for them. They knew as much.

"We joked around about it before the game, just getting out of this month," Jae Crowder said Wednesday, after the Cavs beat Miami 91-89 to finish January with a 6-8 record. "It's been a tough one for us."

But hey, February is off to a smashing start, if LeBron to the Warriors rumors are your jam.

The first game the Cavs play in the new month is at 8:30 p.m. Saturday against the Houston Rockets on ABC -- on paper the toughest game on what is the NBA's fifth-hardest schedule in February.

James Harden posted 60 points in a triple double earlier this week, and the position he plays (point guard) is where the Cavs are vulnerable right now. Isaiah Thomas made his Cavs debut in January and has struggled all month to regain his form after missing 36 games with hip injuries. The Cavs are being outscored by 10.5 points per 100 possessions with Thomas on the court.

This game against the Rockets is of course on national TV, where the Cavs went 0-7 in January and were outscored by 133 points. They lost three times by at least 24 points, and for the first time in James' career, consecutive games by at least 25.

Cleveland lost Kevin Love to a broken bone in his left hand this week for up to two months.

Dwyane Wade's agent and one of the people closest to him, Henry Thomas, passed away last week.

The Cavs' behind-closed-doors drama seeped into public view all month.

"First of all, I'm happy January is over," Wade said. "January is not a good month. Move on to February which hopefully is a better month. ... In this league, you have to have a short memory. We can't worry about, as players neither, when you struggle the night before, you have to move on. We can't worry about the struggles, we can't worry about what anyone has to say about us.

"We've just got to continue to understand what we have to do to get better and what wins ball games for us."

The Cavs woke up this morning as winners of three of their last four games, and six games behind Boston for first place in the East. On New Year's Day, the Cavs trailed the Cs by 4.0 games and has lost their last three in December.

The trade deadline is Feb. 8. The Cavs' biggest trade asset is the rights to Brooklyn's No. 1 draft pick this season. It remains to be seen what Cleveland can do, either by including that pick or not, to upgrade its roster.

One trade chip -- Channing Frye's expiring $7.3 million contract -- seems off the table because the Cavs need Frye now, due to Love's injury. Frye has scored 36 points off the bench in the two games since Love's injury.

As for James, a source said he would on Friday take questions about an ESPN report suggesting he would meet with the Warriors -- the Warriors, with whom he's battled in the last three Finals -- in free agency this offseason if the defending champs were to clear salary cap space to give James a max contract.

A source close to James said he has had no discussions with anyone close to him about joining the Warriors or any other team.

Also, Golden State could not clear the space to sign James without tearing up its team through trades. The ESPN report suggested trading Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala to the Cavs in a sign-and-trade for James, as well as dumping Shaun Livingston and getting Kevin Durant to pick up the player option in his contract -- which is akin to taking a pay cut.

On Thursday, while declining to discuss James, Warriors general manager Bob Myers said. "The cohesiveness of our team matters to us and the continuity matters to us."

In the meantime, James saw significant dips in his scoring and shooting percentages in January and a spike in turnovers.

"I don't wish for days to be gone or want to get to the next month," James said. "I've always lived in the moment and this is basketball, but there are other things bigger than that. I've had an opportunity to do a lot of great things in this month. Obviously the game of basketball has been tough for us this month, but that's not the end all, be all for me in my life. So, move onto February and as a team we want to play better basketball, but I'm never a guy to say let's get out of this month or move onto the next.

"You take the lumps when they come and you try to get better, and you don't ever try to fast track anything or slow anything down when you're in the moment."