Kenny Atkinson, three months into his first season as Cleveland's head coach, has not had to confront a moment quite like this one. The Cavaliers came into Wednesday night a clear favourite in their second-round series against Detroit. They left it down 0-2, on the back of a 107-101 loss in which they led by as many as 14 points in the second half, and Atkinson stood at the postgame podium ticking through the categories that had, in turn, undone his team.
The biggest one was the offensive glass in the fourth quarter — and Atkinson did not need the film to know how badly it had hurt Cleveland.
"I really wish I had the film. I could like watch it real quick. The thing that stood out to me was the offensive rebounds. I think they had eight offensive rebounds in that fourth quarter. And that's a lot," Atkinson said. "The rebounding was — I thought we got some good stops, made some good defensive plays, and then we couldn't come up with the rebound. The big one was out of the timeout, you know, we said: man, we got to get this. Our box-out responsibilities on the free throw. And they miss, they get the offensive rebound, and they score. So I don't know. We got to fix our rebounding."
The shooting was the other story. Cleveland had been a top-five three-point shooting team during the regular season. On Wednesday night they were 7-of-32 from beyond the arc. Atkinson framed the shooting as compounding the rebounding problem rather than driving it.
"I will say the positive about this. We were plus three in the possession game. We gave ourselves a chance," he said. "Unfortunately it was not a night where we shot the ball well. Seven for 32 from three. That was a factor too."
The most uncomfortable question Atkinson had to answer was the one Cleveland's franchise has spent the last week dodging — why does this team always seem to be fighting an uphill battle? The Cavaliers have now trailed by double digits in seven of their last eight playoff games. They are 1-1 in elimination scenarios already. They were 14 points up on Detroit on Wednesday night and lost. Asked the same question Mitchell had been asked in his postgame, Atkinson did not have an answer beyond echoing his star.
"I know," Atkinson said. "Listen, another not-great start for that starting group."
The Cavaliers' starting five — Mitchell, Garland, Mobley, Allen and Hunter — has been outscored by double digits in the first quarter of consecutive games against Detroit. The Pistons have run their press hard, switched physically across screens, and forced the kind of careful, deliberate playmaking Cleveland's offence does not run quickly enough to overcome.
Atkinson, asked what the Cavaliers needed to clean up specifically heading back to Cleveland for Game 3, returned to the rebounding answer.
"I think our defense was pretty solid. Just rebounding the basketball," Atkinson said. "Second half, we did a better job when we turned the basketball over. And then, you know, just make some shots."
The stat that should haunt Atkinson on the flight home is the offensive-glass split. In a fourth quarter that began with Cleveland leading and ended with the Cavaliers being outscored 28-16, Detroit got eight offensive rebounds. Eight. The closest a single Cavaliers player came to one was Jarrett Allen with two. The cumulative damage — second-chance points, fouled-out rotations, possessions that should have been Cleveland's converted into Pistons buckets at the other end — is the unspoken story of why a series that should have been competitive is one game from being functionally over.
Game 3 is Saturday in Cleveland. The Cavaliers have not lost a home playoff game in this postseason. Atkinson, in his first playoff run as a head coach, will need that record to hold — and he will need to figure out how to get a basketball off the rim before the Pistons can get a second one.
