{"id":714983,"date":"2026-04-21T04:40:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T04:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714983\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T04:40:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T04:40:42","slug":"cavaliers-big-3-of-mitchell-harden-and-mobley-come-up-big-in-game-2-win-over-raptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714983\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavaliers’ big 3 of Mitchell, Harden and Mobley come up big in Game 2 win over Raptors"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 After not playing together much in the regular season, the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>‘ new big three came up big in their first major playoff test.<\/p>\n

Donovan Mitchell<\/a> continued his postseason scoring prowess, and James Harden<\/a> and Evan Mobley<\/a> made big plays on both ends of the floor as the Cavaliers beat the Toronto Raptors 115-105<\/a> on Monday night for a 2-0 lead in their Eastern Conference first-round series.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis was a superstar game. Those three led us,\u201d Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. \u201cThey hit the big shots. I think James had four steals in the second half, so excellent defensive. Evan really good defensively and Don just made some out-of-this-world, incredible shots. That’s why they’re stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell scored 30 points, including four 3-pointers, and had seven rebounds, five assists and a steal in 37 minutes.<\/p>\n

Harden added 28 points, but his biggest impact might have been on defense with five steals.<\/p>\n

Mobley had a team-high eight rebounds and scored 25 points on 11-of-13 shooting.<\/p>\n

It was the fourth time in franchise history the Cavaliers have had at least three players score 25 points in a playoff game. But Mitchell said it was Harden’s constant attention on defense that made the difference Monday night. Cleveland forced Toronto into season-high 22 turnovers that led to 22 Cavaliers points.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think the biggest thing with him is he\u2019s obviously an-all world offensive talent, but the one thing that jumps out to you as soon as he gets here is the communication about defense,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cI\u2019m over here in huddles talking about, \u2018We could do this offensively.\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018Man, we just need three stops in a row.\u2019 He\u2019s the vocal one on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have (the 2025) defensive player of the year (in Mobley), but when you have a guy like him (Harden) coming in and making defense the priority, that goes a long way for the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell had nine points in the fourth quarter, including seven straight as the Cavaliers built a 106-90 lead with 3:09 remaining. The All-star guard added some flair in the final minute with a 13-foot turnaround bank shot with 45.3 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n

Harden was 9 of 14 from the field and had five rebounds, four assists and one block. He moved past Rajon Rondo<\/a> for seventh place in career postseason assists with 1,139.<\/p>\n

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Harden and Mobley showed some teamwork on defense during the fourth quarter. Mobley forced Toronto’s Sandro Mamukelashvili<\/a> to alter his shot in the paint, and Harden came up with the steal with 4:02 remaining, making it his fourth career playoff game with at least five.<\/p>\n

Mitchell finished the sequence with a layup to make it 104-90.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis communication of just talking while in the action is great and we need that,\u201d Mobley said of Harden. \u201cI know his tendencies now that he may go out to whoever\u2019s next and stuff like that. And having those conversations prior that when you get into those situations, you already know what\u2019s kind of about to happen and you come up with steals like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harden has said the communication since he was acquired from the Los Angeles Clippers<\/a> on Feb. 4 has helped him get comfortable with Mitchell and Mobley, despite their lack of playing time together.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI know we are behind. So I think what speeds that process up is communication and helping each other out,\u201d he said. \u201cI think our communication during games, practice days, whatever is very, very important. That can get us over the hump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 3 is Thursday night at Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we did a solid job. There\u2019s things we can clean up,\u201d said Mitchell, who has scored at least 30 points in six of his last seven playoff games. \u201cWe just have to continue to stay mentally even-keel. They got it close, but we did what we were supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Raptors will try to contain the Cavs’ big three and get back in the series.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo be honest, they\u2019re a problem. They\u2019re a problem and we\u2019ve got to figure out how to fix that,\u201d guard RJ Barrett<\/a> said. \u201cNow going home, we\u2019ve got to get these next two.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 After not playing together much in the regular season, the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ new big three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,193,864,576,560,135,6,1846,4502,681,1041,7990,680,476,3820],"class_list":{"0":"post-714983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","10":"tag-donovan-mitchell","11":"tag-evan-mobley","12":"tag-james-harden","13":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-playoff-game","16":"tag-rajon-rondo","17":"tag-raptors","18":"tag-rj-barrett","19":"tag-sandro-mamukelashvili","20":"tag-toronto","21":"tag-toronto-raptors","22":"tag-torontoraptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116440860283987054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714983","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=714983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}