Cavs guard Donovan Mitchell plays defense against Boston's Marcus Smart. ESPN Cleveland/Rob Lorenzo
Game Night Observations: Superstar things, Stevens' helping hand, and a potential turning point
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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and TheLandOnDemand.comSometimes, when everything isn’t going according to plan, the superstar on the team needs to step up and get the team back on track.
Donovan Mitchell did that for the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night in a 105-90 road win over the Dallas Mavericks.
Mitchell was masterful in the first half for the Cavs, scoring 27 of his game-high 34 points. After the disastrous loss in San Antonio on Monday night, the Cavaliers needed a performance like that from Mitchell. Sometimes, the best player on the floor needs to remind everybody why they’re the best player on the floor. Mitchell doing that put the Cavs in a much better place.
Everything was working for Mitchell in the first half. He was able to seemingly get to any spot on the floor he wanted to. It served as a reminder that when he needs to tap into that, he can. It can’t be an every night occurrence, but when it’s really needed, Mitchell can take over a game. That’s what he did in the first half.
It’s hard to know exactly what the Cavs thought they were getting when Mitchell was acquired from Utah in early September. Obviously, expectations were high, but it’s also difficult to think Mitchell has done anything but exceed them thus far. He’s now played 25 games for the Cavs and already regularly generates discussion of where he ranks amongst the greatest players in team history. Whether those discussions are fair or not is one thing, but the fact that they happen at all is a testament to how great he’s been for the Cavaliers.
Mitchell, night in and night out, is a great player for the Cavs. He’s consistently the best player on the floor. One of the things that separates that type of player from an MVP caliber player is the ability to take it to another level when the team needs that done. Mitchell has done that for the Cavs several times this season, and Wednesday was just the latest example of it.
Helping hands
The Cavaliers received a really strong effort from swingman Lamar Stevens on Wednesday night in the win. He had his best game of the season for the Cavs, finishing with 18 points and 11 rebounds, marking his first double-double of the season. More importantly, Stevens helped to slow down Dallas’ Luka Doncic, especially early on.
Yes, Doncic finished with 30 points on the night, but really only played well in the third quarter. Doncic was held below his season averages in points, rebounds, and assists. Stevens is a big reason as to why that happened.
Offensively, Stevens is going to be a guy that’s forgotten about often by opposing defenses. When he’s on the floor with the rest of the starting lineup, he spends a good amount of time left in the corner while his defender focuses their attention on what’s happening elsewhere. The fact that Stevens isn’t a dangerous threat to knock down a ton of open 3-pointers is a big reason as to why that’s the case.
What he was able to do offensively despite that on Wednesday is what the blueprint should be for him offensively. He was 8-of-15 from the floor, including a 5-of-6 mark inside the restricted area. Stevens isn’t going to get looks at the rim by posting up. He’s going to find his way there both in transition and by cutting to the basket when either his defender forgets about him, or when his defender helps off him in the pick-and-roll. Both of those things happened on Wednesday.
There will be nights when Stevens is hot from beyond the arc and makes a few 3-pointers. There will be more nights like Wednesday when he’s 1-of-6 from deep. No matter what, teams are going to focus their defensive attention elsewhere – rightfully so. This type of action for the Cavs is something to use when either he or Isaac Okoro is on the floor to help negate that type of strategy defensively. The more often this type of thing is successful, the more open things will be for Garland and Mitchell on the outside.
Could this be the turnaround?
Earlier in the season, there was a lot of noise about how difficult the Cavaliers made closing out games look. It coincided with the team’s five-game losing streak that featured a few games in which they were up late and couldn’t put teams away. That streak ended with a double overtime victory over Charlotte that featured a 10-point lead with less than a minute remaining slip away.
The team fought back and found a way to win in the second overtime. After that game, Mitchell mentioned that he thought the team figured some things out during the second overtime period about how to close a game.
“You look at the second overtime, look at the way we executed, it's like alright cool, we have this, we have that, and then we can add things to it,” Mitchell said back in November.
That win started a streak in which the Cavs won eight of their next 11 games. The team didn’t struggle to close out a game it held the lead in until this past Friday when it melted down against the Sacramento Kings in a game that Mitchell missed due to injury.
Now, how does this correlate to the team struggling on the road? It might not. But Wednesday, or more accurately Monday’s loss to the Spurs and Wednesday’s subsequent win over the Mavericks could serve as that same data point where the team started to figure out how it’s done.
The difference between the two is that closing games out correctly was more of a strategical development and winning on the road is something that required more of an attitude shift. The Cavaliers came out flat on Monday against the Spurs and that’s ultimately what caused them to lose. Wednesday night in Dallas the team started the game on a 16-2 run. The Cavs knew what needed to be done and did it.
Maybe that’s how it will be on the road moving forward for the Cavs, but that’s not going to be known for a while.
The road win for the Cavs is certainly a nice one, but now the team will head back to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse for a season-high six-game road trip that begins on Friday night against the Indiana Pacers.
