INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Donovan Mitchell had 43 points and nine rebounds, and the finally full-strength Cleveland Cavaliers beat Indiana 126-104 on Friday night to cut the Pacers’ lead to 2-1 in the Eastern Conference semifinals.<\/p>\n
The road team has won all three games in the series, and the Pacers will have another chance to break that trend Sunday in Game 4.<\/p>\n
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Cleveland was desperate to avoid falling into a 3-0 hole and used everything in its arsenal to hold on this time – making 14 3-pointers, holding a 56-37 rebounding edge, even relying on zone defense to slow down the high-scoring Pacers.<\/p>\n
And with NBA Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley, All-Star guard Darius Garland and key backup De\u2019Andre Hunter all suited up after missing Game 2, Mitchell got the support he needed.<\/p>\n
Max Strus made four 3-pointers and finished with 20 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. Three other Cleveland players also scored in double figures on a night the Cavs led by as much 26, never trailed and managed to protect their late lead when the Pacers cut the deficit to 11 early in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Bennedict Mathurin led the Pacers with 23 points. Pascal Siakam had 18 and Tyrese Haliburton finished with four points and five assists in his first career home loss in a postseason game he’s appeared.<\/p>\n
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The most physical of the three games resulted in players routinely sprawled on the floor. Hunter turned into a hard shoulder after making a basket early in the second quarter, a collision that nearly knocked him down, and Mitchell took a nasty spill into the front-row seats while being called for an offensive foul.<\/p>\n
Tempers also flared at times with the Pacers drawing five technical fouls, one for a delay of game.<\/p>\n
On the court, though, Cleveland controlled most of the game after breaking a 36-36 tie with a 25-4 run that helped push the Cavs to a 66-45 halftime cushion.<\/p>\n
Indiana cut it to 80-65 midway through the third quarter and looked ready to pull off another fourth-quarter rally when Siakam’s 3 with 8:24 to play made it 104-93. But Mitchell and Strus answered with back-to-back 3s to lead a game-sealing charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Donovan Mitchell had 43 points and nine rebounds, and the finally full-strength Cleveland Cavaliers beat Indiana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[2888,7,363,306,305,193,3846,791,864,576,113,872,6,114,279,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-22625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-bennedict-mathurin","11":"tag-cavaliers","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","15":"tag-darius-garland","16":"tag-donovan-mitchell","17":"tag-evan-mobley","18":"tag-indiana","19":"tag-max-strus","20":"tag-nba","21":"tag-pacers","22":"tag-pascal-siakam","23":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114481551338476289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}