The Cleveland Cavaliers were on the precipice of a long, difficult plane ride home from the nation’s capital before NBA MVP candidate Donovan Mitchell came to the rescue again.
“We found Donovan Mitchell, or Donovan Mitchell found us,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson said postgame. “It was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. He had 35 in the second half.”
Trailing 100-85 on the road to an inexperienced Washington Wizards team with a 3-19 record and no Alex Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly, Khris Middleton, or Corey Kispert, Mitchell detonated for half of his 48 points in the fourth quarter to help the Cavs escape D.C. with a 130-126 win. It was a season-high and the second-highest point total of his career.
Once again, the Cavs relied upon their six-time All-Star guard to dig them out of a self-created hole and were carried by him.
“I mean, really, all year,” Lonzo Ball said following the win. “That’s Spiderman. He’s our superhero for sure. We need to help him out more.”
“Can’t really lose this game coming out of the break,” Mitchell added postgame in the locker room. “It’s always about finding spots. I think in the first half, kind of feeling it, and then understanding it’s your time to go and be aggressive. It may not always be shots, but sometimes, being aggressive, getting downhill, creating, and obviously, when shots are falling, continue to shoot.”
Was his team’s effort what he expected following a long layoff with a tough film session? Mitchell pondered it with a lengthy, two-fold response.
“You’re not always gonna come out and just [dominate right away],” Mitchell said. “As much as you would like that, it’s not how this is just built, right? So understanding there’s positivity in responding ’cause we put ourselves in the position where, after the loss to Golden State, you’re playing a team that’s 3-19, and you’re down 15. You can kind of tuck your tails and say, ‘Alright,’ and give in. But we found a way as a group, as a collective when the shots weren’t necessarily [falling], and we picked it up. That’s the positive. That comes from the five days, from being able to talk to each other honestly. I’m happy about that.
“On the flip side, that can’t happen, and we can’t be in that position. We’ve had this conversation. This can’t happen. We can’t be in that position, so we have to figure it out. I don’t really have an answer for you. I’m just proud of the response. Keep chipping. As much as we would love for it to be, ‘Alright, we had five days and boom,’ it’s not how it works. Things don’t just happen like that. So this is a good step to learn from, and continue to carry it into [the] Charlotte [game] and continue to carry it on from there. There’s two sides to this. I’m not gonna favor with either. Just continue to stay and keep chipping.”
Mitchell shared that the Cavs are “stuck in mud” right now and they’ll have to find a way to get out of it. He immediately pointed to positives like Evan Mobley and De’Andre’s rebounding fight, Darius Garland’s fourth-quarter with getting downhill, Ball and Craig Porter Jr. getting into gaps defensively, Dean Wade playing in the half roll, and Jaylon Tyson keeping his eyes open as a playmaker.
“Everybody has a part,” Mitchell said. “And that’s where we use it to uplift, as opposed to saying, ‘D***, we didn’t do this.’ No, let’s uplift and go from there.”
Cleveland started the final period with a four-guard lineup around Mobley, which quickly turned the tide out of the gate. It was Mitchell, Garland, Ball, and Porter who put pressure on the ball, forced Washington turnovers, and got the wine and gold moving in transition.
“Defensively, we set a tone,” Mitchell said. “There was a wall. There wasn’t no easy drives, we were competing on the boards, getting steals, getting deflections. That’s what turned the energy up. I think [Porter] and Lonzo really set that tone for us in the fourth quarter, and you stick with it. It ended up winning us the game. That’s huge. Obviously, I do what I do, Ev does what he does, but those guys are high, high value.”
“Our defensive intensity, I think that turned it around for us,” Ball added. “We started getting some easy baskets, started to get turnovers, and play with a lot more energy, I feel like. That all carried over from the whole fourth, and we ended up coming back and getting a win.”
Atkinson credited Cavs assistant Johnnie Bryant for his plea to put Porter in the game.
“I wasn’t gonna put CP in,” Atkinson said. “He was like, ‘Put CP in. Listen to me.’ That was a great call by Johnnie. I thought that kinda changed the game. He got some steals and the rebounds. You know, CP has had a couple of those games this year where it feels like he comes in, changes the spirit, shifts the energy of the game. He was our sparkplug [Friday].”
Ball was a plus-26 in the box score despite only going 1-of-6 in the contest, but that one was a critical triple make to get Cleveland within a point at the 2:58 mark on a bullet pass from Garland.
“I know the player,” Atkinson said. “I know it’s gonna turn. It started to turn [Friday]. But really, where he was stellar, it was his defense. That was the real reason we wanted him in the game. He’s an elite defender in this league, and he gets in there and he rebounds. We needed him [Friday], needed a big game from him. We had some other guys struggling.”
The ball was touching the paint, which had to happen after the Cavs had taken – and missed – a lot of 3s. From there, they saw it go through the net and upped their intensity, which trickled to the rest of the team for the remainder of the period.
This wasn’t the best look for Cleveland following a long layover, but at the very least, it resulted in a win against a team the wine and gold couldn’t afford to lose to.
Thank goodness for the wine and gold’s friendly neighborhood SpidaMan.