(AP) \u2014 Donovan Mitchell scored 31 points, Evan Mobley had 22 points and tied a career high with 19 rebounds, and the Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Atlanta Hawks 122-116 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
James Harden added 21 points for the Cavaliers, who have won four straight and seven of eight. Cleveland (51-29) can finish no lower than fourth place in the Eastern Conference and is 1\/2 game behind New York for the third seed.<\/p>\n
Nickeil Alexander-Walker scored 25 points, and Jonathan Kuminga had 24 off the bench as Atlanta was unable to clinch a playoff berth with the loss. The Hawks (45-35) have dropped their last two after winning four straight. They are one game ahead of Toronto for the fifth seed, but only 1 1\/2 in front of Orlando to avoid being in the play-in tournament.<\/p>\n
It was Mitchell’s 200th regular-season game with at least 20 points in four years with the Cavaliers. He is the fifth player in franchise history to reach that milestone.<\/p>\n
Mitchell had his 14th game this season with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Atlanta took a 67-56 lead on a dunk by Dyson Daniels with 57 seconds remaining in the first half before Cleveland went on a 17-3 run over the final minute of the second quarter and first three minutes of the third.<\/p>\n
Cleveland outscored Atlanta 44-20 in the third to take a 104-87 advantage into the final 12 minutes. A 3-point play by Dennis Schroder put the Cavaliers up 110-92 before the Hawks answered back with an 18-2 run, where Alexander-Walker had seven points.<\/p>\n
Kuminga’s dunk got Atlanta within 118-116 and had a chance to tie after Sam Merrill missed a 3-pointer. But Alexander-Walker lost possession of the ball in the paint before Jarrett Allen got the steal. Mitchell then made a pair of free throws to put the Cavaliers up by more than one possession.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The two teams meet Friday in Atlanta for the fourth and final time in the regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) \u2014 Donovan Mitchell scored 31 points, Evan Mobley had 22 points and tied a career high with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3776],"tags":[1112,2097,676,208,3874,7,193,864,677,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-706313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-ap","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-atlanta","11":"tag-atlanta-hawks","12":"tag-atlantahawks","13":"tag-basketball","14":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","15":"tag-donovan-mitchell","16":"tag-hawks","17":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116372542806311007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706313","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=706313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}