Before Sunday night’s game against the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said he wanted to see what his team would look like after back-to-back losses to the Atlanta Hawks — the first adversity it has faced this season.
Then, when the Cavaliers found themselves down by 14 in the third quarter, it felt like they could potentially get run out of their own building by the defending champions, who were without Jaylen Brown (illness) and Derrick White (foot).
“That was kind of my question mark a little bit with this team after those two losses to Atlanta,” Atkinson would say later, “and it looked like we were down and out that third quarter.
“They were rolling, the crowd was kind of down, we were all kind of down.”
Instead of watching the game slip away from him, and his team losing for a third straight time, Mitchell put the Cavaliers on his back, scoring 30 points in the second half — including 20 points in the fourth while going a perfect 6-for-6 from the field — to outduel Jayson Tatum down the stretch and lift Cleveland to a 115-111 victory.
“In the third,” Mitchell said when asked when he realized he was going to have to take over the game. “I kind of felt it then, especially — and I’m going to be selfish when I say this — when [Tatum] hit a shot over me.
“I was like, ‘He’s starting to get it going, they’re starting to get confidence, they’re starting to build, we’re turning it over.’ … In the third, I was just waiting, just trying to figure out where to go.
“And then, when I came back in the fourth, kind of be like, ‘All right, give me the ball. It’s time to go.’ And I was just telling somebody,
‘Shots may not fall. I may go 0-for-6.’ But you know what? You have to find a way to be like, ‘I’m going to be aggressive right here. Get to my spots and if we go out, we’ll go like this.’ And that’s what tonight was.”
With the win, the Cavaliers retained their hold on the NBA’s best record at 18-3, ahead of the 16-4 Celtics.
