The Cleveland Cavaliers walked off the Madison Square Garden floor down 0-2 in the Eastern Conference finals, having scored 27 points in the first quarter of Game 2 and never hit that mark in any of the next three. Donovan Mitchell, asked at the podium what had gone wrong offensively, refused to indulge the premise.
"Nothing," Mitchell said. "We just didn't make shots. I loved everything about the looks we got. Some days you just missed the open ones. We got great looks. Sometimes we're in and out, sometimes they're short. Offensively, I'm not worried at all. We did a really good job getting to the paint trying to find guys, and that's why our assist total was low. It's just because we couldn't make shots, and it was everybody. So nothing to hang our head about. They protected home court and we've seen this before. So we got to go get Game 3."
The Cavs were in the bonus for the final 19 minutes of the game, cut a 15-point deficit at the end of the third to seven or eight in the fourth, and never broke the run that Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson had unleashed in the third. Asked whether the volume of playoff minutes was wearing the team out, Mitchell did not wait for the question to finish.
"We're not tired," he said. "We're not tired. We're ready to go for Game 3."
In Game 1, Brunson had hunted James Harden in the late minutes for 38 points. In Game 2, the Cavaliers sent the second defender at Brunson, and Hart bombed them out of the building with a playoff career-high 26. Mitchell offered a balanced answer.
"Go back and watch it, and sometimes you got to tip your cap," he said. "You're not comparing the players, but you see a similar situation in the other series with Caruso. They're guarding him kind of the same way. I'm not saying he's him or whatever, or vice versa, but you just got to adjust, and we'll look at the film and figure out ways to adjust. But sometimes you got to tip your cap. He made a one-handed spin move on me. Not to say he's not capable, but sometimes that's what happens. The biggest thing is we'll make our adjustments. But you give credit where credit's due. They made the right plays and knocked down the shots they were supposed to make."
Where Stephen A. Smith and Tim Legler had spent the morning calling the loss a math problem with Brunson at the centre, Mitchell kept reframing the issue as one of his own team's shot quality. "It would have been great to steal two," he said. "That was the idea. We had an opportunity to, and we didn't. So go home for Game 3 and protect home court like we have been."
With the Knicks now riding nine straight postseason wins, Mitchell was asked what a team draws on when it goes down 0-2 in a conference final. His answer was a phrase he has been repeating since the Cavaliers won their second-round series against Detroit.
"Protect home court. I've said this since the Toronto series. It's all it is. It's 2-0. They did their job. We got to do the same thing."
He leaned on the same playoff reps that exhausted the question about fatigue. "This isn't our first time at it. This isn't our first time facing adversity. We've been through two Game 7s. So being down 0-2, it's not the biggest challenge. It's just something we just — it's right here. So let's go ahead and take advantage of it. Understand that they're going to make adjustments. We are as well. And obviously our process was right tonight. I'm not mad at what we did offensively, defensively, make some tweaks and changes. And like you said, sometimes you got to tip your cap to the shot making, and that was tonight."
Pushed on whether the Cavs needed to leave a shooter like Hart open in order to commit to Brunson, Mitchell sketched out the trade-off but did not concede it.
"I mean, yes and no. You give credit where credit's due. He hit shots tonight. There's a balance, and we'll find that and watch the film. But ultimately it looks worse and feels worse when we're not making shots — open shots. So that's why for me, I'm not sitting here like, oh man, scrambling and trying to figure things out. At the end of the day, we make some shots, we'll be in good shape."
A reporter relayed that head coach Kenny Atkinson and the ESPN broadcast had wondered aloud during the game whether Mitchell was working through something physically. "I'm great. No, I'm great. I'm great," he said.
There were tweaks coming, Mitchell admitted, but he kept returning to the same simple framework. "There's always adjustments. Always things you can tweak. We'll look back at it and fix it. But the biggest thing is, in these moments, you keep trusting what you've been doing. We did a lot of really good things, and this didn't end our way. Defensively we'll make some changes. Maybe we contest Josh a little bit more. Maybe we don't. Maybe we guard Mikal different. Maybe we guard OG different. Maybe we guard Cat different. There's so many maybes and yesses. When you watch the film, we'll figure it out and go from there."
The Cavaliers, the East's No. 1 seed, now head back to Cleveland needing to win four of five against a Knicks team that has not lost in nine games. Mitchell's job, he kept implying, is not to panic on the way home.
