The Cleveland Cavaliers came into this season with a lot to prove.
Donovan Mitchell needs to prove he can carry a team to the Finals. Darius Garland needs to prove he can play with Mitchell. Evan Mobley needs to prove he is worthy of all the hype. Kenny Atkinson needs to prove he’s a great coach, not just a great coach for a young team. And the Cavs need to prove that this team isn’t just good, but good enough to win a championship.
They are, in many ways, trying to do what Boston did last season. The Celtics came into the season with similar questions about Jayson Tatum, how well he and Jaylen Brown play together, Kristaps Porzingis being “the unicorn,” and Joe Mazzulla’s coaching ability.
The Cavs are hoping their answers equal what Boston’s did. And the only way to know if they do is to measure themselves against the team that did what they hope to accomplish.
“That third quarter kind of felt like Game 3,“ Donovan Mitchell said, comparing Boston’s 35-21 quarter in this game to the stretch in the semifinals where Boston went from up five to up 23 in about eight minutes. “They made a run, we didn’t respond. So you’re just seeing the growth … that's what tonight was. We could have easily been like ‘alright, we’re turning the ball over, not getting stops, offense kind of bogged down. But who are we when we hit adversity?’”
The Cavs have emerged as Boston’s biggest threat in the East. If one of these teams makes it to the Finals, it seems like they’ll have to beat the other to make it happen. And the more they play, the more the Celtics teach the Cavs about what it takes to win.
Take, for example, Jayson Tatum’s relentless destruction of Garland on his way to a 33-point night. Last season, the Cavs took steps to protect Garland and make Boston really work to hunt the mismatch. This year, Atkinson is forcing his young star to figure it out.
“They literally picked on them every single play,” Atkinson said after the game. “My point to Darius (was) ‘we’re not hiding you. You’re good enough. Accept the challenge. You’re smart enough’ … You gotta be able to switch and if he’s going to be playing late in games, he’s gotta be able to switch.”
Garland drew the Tatum assignment, again, on Tatum’s final two drives of the game and stayed with him. Was it stellar defense? No, but he wasn’t a turnstile, either. Was there a foul? Maybe. Tatum wanted one. But those will never be called in the playoffs. Is it going on the highlight reel of how stop Tatum in clutch situations? No, but they were still stops when the Cavs needed them. Atkinson can put those two plays on the game film and use them to pump up Garland’s confidence and, more importantly, his desire to give maximum defensive effort.
The Celtics are, in a way, teaching the Cavs the lessons they need to learn to catch up to Boston. Maybe the most important thing the Garland matchup did for Cleveland was flip Mazzulla’s math in their favor.
Boston took 14 2-pointers in the fourth quarter and nine 3-pointers. The Cavs also took nine. They made four more than Boston did.
“When you watch the game as a fan, you see the guy maybe scoring in 2-point range,” Mitchell said. “At the end of the day, they're a 3-point shooting team. If they're taking tough, contested 2s, and he’s continuing to body him and make it tough, we live.”
It’s not like this game unlocked some deep secrets to beating the Celtics. If Al Horford had just hit one of his wide-open corner 3-pointers, or Jrue Holiday hit anything at all, then this space would have been full of effusive praise for Drew Peterson and Mazzulla’s willingness to press whatever buttons he needed to press with Jaylen Brown and Derrick White out.
But results like this matter to a team like Cleveland. They could have lost and still taken positives out of the game, but those lessons hit different when a win reinforces them … especially a win against the championship team you’re chasing.
And each time they get this feeling, it makes the next time these teams face each other a little tougher. A guy like Garland can build on that confidence, not only playing better defensively the next time these teams see each other, but also carrying that confidence into his offense. Their other important role players, like Isaac Okoro, can feed off wins like this knowing they can take a punch from the Celtics and fire back.
Maybe the Celtics can simply say things would be different at full strength. And maybe that's all they’d need to hold off Mitchell the next time around. Maybe Brown would bother Mitchell into a miss or two and the next comeback would fall short.
Or maybe the Cavs won’t be as far behind next time. Maybe they won’t be behind at all. It’s hard to say what future matchups will look like. They are learning how to win games like this. They're one of the best fourth-quarter teams in the league and the only team in the NBA this season to win a game when they’ve been down 12 heading into the final quarter.
They're dangerous, and a win like this only makes them tougher.
“A team like that, just because two guys are down, they got a lot of guys who are capable. You gotta respect them. They're champions for a reason,” Mitchell said. “We gotta go out there and make a statement … We needed this win and understanding that, yeah, there's always gonna be that perception, if we win, if we lose, what happens, what type of team are we? But my biggest thing is always just trying to build and develop good habits. And we did that tonight.”
