CLEVELAND — He arrived dressed in all white, a tuxedo top and shorts combination that only a professional athlete with $400 million in career earnings could make cool. Whether James Harden dressed for a wedding or a funeral before his first playoff game with the Cleveland Cavaliers won’t be known for at least a few more weeks.
What’s clear at this point is two terrific veterans, two brilliant shotmakers and two of the premier guards of their time are united, hoping to help save each other from a career of postseason disappointment.
Harden’s playoff struggles are well-documented. So, too, are Donovan Mitchell’s. Despite his plight, Harden has actually produced his share of magnificent playoff games — just not in the biggest moments. Mitchell has rarely been the problem on his teams, yet he has never made it out of the second round. Now the Cavaliers are counting on both to coax the absolute best from the other.
I wrote after last season’s playoff loss to the Indiana Pacers that the Cavs advance this year as far as Evan Mobley takes them because we know how far a Mitchell-led team can go. We have eight years of evidence that it’s the second round.
That was obviously before Harden’s arrival. Mobley struggled in an expanded role early this season, and Harden is among the top 75 players of all time. He might be a bit older these days, but he immediately becomes the most talented partner Mitchell has ever played alongside. No disrespect to Rudy Gobert or Darius Garland or even Mobley, but Harden is in an elite class that the others simply haven’t reached.
Along with his scoring ability, he is excellent at dictating pace. The offense goes when he’s ready and not a moment before. He can tilt defensive pressure as he sees fit and control the entire floor with a precision pick-and-roll game that ranks among the league’s best.
When he arrived, I wondered how he would fit alongside Mitchell, whose game is drastically different. The answers have been overwhelmingly positive.
“He gets us clicking,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said of Harden. “It’s like a quarterback that’s super accurate. He’s just kind of picking them apart with short passes.”
Harden’s excellence should continue to reveal itself over the course of these playoffs, as it did with Saturday’s relatively easy 126-113 win over the Toronto Raptors in Game 1.
The Cavaliers will soon be tested, but I don’t believe it will be in this round. This is a 4-5 matchup in name only. The Raptors don’t have the perimeter shooting to match the Cavs’ artillery.
Toronto lives in the midrange. Brandon Ingram can get his shot off from anywhere and over anyone the Cavs put on him, but most of those shots come inside the 3-point line.
Cleveland’s shot chart from Game 1 was a master class in analytics: Everything — everything — was either in the paint or behind the line. It was four quarters of Harden’s personal brush strokes.
“I think we got quality shots,” Harden said. “That’s going to be a huge, huge key for the series.”
Harden has played alongside some of the game’s best. He had Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City and Chris Paul in Houston. Each of them will be Hall of Famers one day. He played briefly alongside Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn, a pairing that Harden and Mitchell might best replicate. Mitchell is a ferocious scorer who is comfortable playing off the ball.
Together, their ability to penetrate and attack defenses will stress any opponent the Cavs face between now and June. Mitchell made it a point to get to the rim late in the regular season in preparation for these playoffs. Attack, collapse the defense and kick to the shooters.
Harden’s presence will reduce the load he has to carry on offense. Mitchell has multiple playoff games the last two years with absurd usage rates in the 40s and 50s. In both seasons, the Cavs’ offense was at times reduced to four players standing around waiting for him to bail them out. That should no longer be the case.
While Mitchell rested in the third quarter of Game 1, Harden and Max Strus extended the lead. Harden’s ability to find bigs on pick-and-rolls with precision passes will keep both Jarrett Allen and Mobley active in the offense.
Toronto’s flurry of midrange shots isn’t likely to keep pace as this series progresses.
After that?
It’s hard to say just how good this version of the Cavs can become. Harden, Mitchell, Allen and Mobley played just seven games and 92 minutes together during the regular season. Still, they outscored opponents by 52 points and registered a net rating of 26.7.
The beauty of this four-pack is how the pieces fit in tandem. Allen is the ideal pairing for Harden, and Mobley improved greatly as a pick-and-roll partner alongside Harden as their time on the floor together expanded. Similarly, Mitchell can fit alongside either big. It’s only one game, and a first-round series can be deceiving.
Nevertheless, it’s a bit poetic that the star player with the reputation for postseason failures is now paired in perhaps the final act of his career with another star who has struggled to find success when it matters most.
Maybe, just maybe, they’re the perfect fit to fill the void in each other’s careers.