BOSTON — A player with less experience and intelligence than Donovan Mitchell would have gone to the locker room at halftime Thursday feeling frustrated and perhaps looking to force the issue.
Mitchell had scored 122 points in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ last three games, but through two quarters of Game 2 against the Boston Celtics, he managed just 6 points on six shots. He’s averaging 23 shots per game in the playoffs, and his team was blown out in Game 1 of this Eastern Conference semifinal series.
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This wasn’t a “What is he waiting for?” situation, though. Mitchell knew he had the Celtics right where he wanted them. For as small of an impact as Mitchell made on the scoreboard in the first half Thursday at TD Garden, the Cavs and the Celtics were tied.
“When it’s time to go, it’s time to go,” Mitchell said.
The Celtics toyed with their food for a half in Game 2. Then the steak on the plate reached up, grabbed them by the neck and dunked their collective heads into the salad bowl. Caris LeVert carved up the Celtics reserves with 21 points off the bench. Mitchell scored 16 of his 29 points (with four 3-pointers, including a breath-stealing buzzer-beater) in a pivotal third quarter that ended with the Cavs up 12, and Cleveland cruised to a surprising 118-94 win.
Cash. #LetEmKnow https://t.co/rkdolyWW8F pic.twitter.com/s9QuWwQbU6
— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) May 10, 2024
Surprising because the Cavs hadn’t won a road playoff game since May 27, 2018, coincidentally in this same TD Garden.
Surprising because as of Thursday afternoon, according to at least some Las Vegas oddsmakers, the Celtics were nearly an even money bet to sweep this series. And surprising because, regardless of the bigger series picture, the Cavs were double-digit underdogs in Game 2 and wound up with the largest margin of victory by a playoff team favored to lose by at least 10 points since 1991, according to ESPN’s statistics department.
What’s becoming less of a shock — and more of a trend — each time it happens is, when it seems like the bottom is finally going to fall out, the Cavs float upward instead of plummet to their season’s death.
It’s happened over and over again, maybe more than you realize.
“It (speaks to) the togetherness of the group, the resilience of the group and the importance of winning to them,” Cavs coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “That’s the most important thing to the guys. There is nothing else that matters. There is no other agenda. We’ve got playoff games in front of us that we need to win.”
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To be clear, what Cleveland pulled off Thursday was a total team victory, with Mitchell merely playing an important role as an eventual leading scorer who made it a point to allow teammates to find their rhythm first.
The Cavs strictly and nearly flawlessly followed their game plan at both ends. They ran the Celtics off the 3-point line and forced them to shoot anything other than an open 3. They took advantage of Boston using its only big — Al Horford — to guard Isaac Okoro, which left the paint, and particularly Evan Mobley, wide open.
The Celtics shot 8 of 35 from 3 and 33 of 80 overall, clearly uncomfortable and perhaps a little undisciplined in the face of the Cavs’ pressure. Mobley tormented Boston in the interior with 15 of his playoff career-high 21 points in the first half. Rather than fall into an easy trap of trying to match the Celtics’ usual 3-point barrage, Cleveland had attempted just 10 treys through two quarters.
Mitchell took over in the third quarter, and by game’s end, the Cavs were 13-of-28 from 3 and 47-of-86 overall, both easily Cleveland’s best shooting marks in the respective categories this postseason. It will take the same discipline to continue starting games by attacking the paint, forcing Boston into making up for a lack of rim protection (remember, Kristaps Porziņģis is likely out for the series with a calf injury) and possibly causing the Celtics to make a decision on how they’re using Horford.
But, at minimum, the Cavs found and exploited a few Celtics weaknesses and didn’t need a historic night from 3-point range (like Miami enjoyed in its lone first-round win against Boston) to do it.
This has been a season in Cleveland when almost nothing good lasts, when injuries, players’ dissatisfaction toward Bickerstaff, questions about the coach’s future and Mitchell’s looming contract situation and plain stinky play on the court have resurfaced.
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A lesser team would have crumbled at any one of the number of existential crises the Cavs have faced this season, and eventually, living that way likely will catch up to them. But the Celtics, and the NBA at large, had better figure out how to make Cleveland stay down the next time. The league is running out of chances, too.
In Game 1 of this series, the Celtics won by 25 on a night when Jayson Tatum didn’t play well, the Cavs only committed five turnovers and Boston only scored 4 second-chance points despite 13 offensive rebounds. That game left multiple scribes from The Athletic comparing the pressure the Celtics put on Cleveland’s defense to those Golden State Warriors teams from a dynasty past and oddsmakers burying this team under 6 feet of cement. The Cavs didn’t seem to have a ton of answers after that game, save for trying to do better defending the 3. Jarrett Allen had missed four consecutive games with a bruised rib and was headed for a fifth absence.
In the last series against Orlando, the Cavs suffered the worst playoff loss in franchise history, played the worst third quarter in years for a second consecutive blowout loss and choked in the fourth quarter of Game 6. They also fell behind by 18 points in a decisive Game 7.
During Cleveland’s final road trip of the regular season, the Cavs went 1-4, were blown out twice and gagged away a 26-point lead in a loss to the LA Clippers. Mitchell was ripping the team’s effort, and teammates were openly questioning Bickerstaff’s rotations and strategy.
There is the season’s inflection point everyone knows so well, in mid-December, when Mobley and Darius Garland were headed for surgeries that would keep them out two months. Rather than sink, the Cavs, who were 13-12 when the Mobley-Garland announcements were made, surged as the best team in the league from that point through the All-Star break.
Before that, though, the Cavs were struggling on the court and having trouble finding a rhythm off it, to the point where numerous league sources believed Bickerstaff was in danger of being dismissed around Thanksgiving.
No Cavs official has ever come out and said Bickerstaff was being reviewed for a firing, but it was perhaps the hot chatter around the Association during the season’s first two months, among players, agents and rival executives. A brutal home loss to lowly Portland on Nov. 30 was followed by a road game two nights later at Detroit, which was in the midst of a historic losing streak. Had the Cavs lost to the Pistons, multiple league sources say Bickerstaff may not have survived it. But Cleveland won that game and the two after it.
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“The biggest thing is, we have a group that sticks together and believes in each other,” Mitchell said. “You know, even when we got into that (losing) streak in L.A. (at the end of the regular season), it’s easy to kind of be like, ‘All right, we don’t have it.’ … But understanding that we’ve been through so much — why stop now?
“We’ve had guys in, we’ve had guys out. We’ve played terrible, we’ve played well. … For us, the biggest thing is we believe in each other.”
The Celtics couldn’t take advantage of a slow first half for Mitchell, unless you believe his slowness was purposeful.
If that’s the case, then Mitchell indeed had Boston right where he wanted it. Maybe the same holds true for the Cavs and this series.
(Photo of Donovan Mitchell and Jayson Tatum: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
