Danny Cunningham covers the Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and TheLandOnDemand.comThe Cavaliers won their sixth straight game in a 114-113 overtime victory over the Boston Celtics on Wednesday night at home. It was their first full game with Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell as Garland returned from a two-week absence due to a left eye laceration suffered on opening night.
When Garland returned, he was told to shoot.
“Donovan told me, 'you've gotta go take the first six shots,'” Garland said after the game.
Garland didn’t take quite the first six shots of the game, but he did have one of the best first quarters of his career. It was a quick reminder that Mitchell isn’t the only All-Star in the backcourt for the Cavs. He finished the period with six shot attempts, making four of them, including three 3-pointers, on his way to 14 points.
Garland looked as if he hadn’t missed any time at all, he seamlessly fit in on both ends of the floor and reminded fans just how high the ceiling for this group is. Even on a night when things didn’t go as well as they could have, the Cavs still found a way to beat one of the better teams in basketball.
The return to the floor for Garland meant helping the Cavaliers be complete for the time being. It gave a glimpse into what they can be. It’s also something was a fear wouldn’t happen for quite some time after Garland fell victim to a swipe by Toronto’s Gary Trent Jr. on opening night.
“Yeah, I was super scared. When it first happened, I rolled over, I felt blood coming out of my eye. So that's when I got really nervous,” Garland said. “I was ready for surgery in Toronto. I was expecting that. I was expected stitches and being out a couple months. But by the grace of God, I'm here with two eyes now and I'm back and I'm healthy.”
Garland ultimately missed two weeks and returned without needing to wear protective eyewear. For him, it was a long two weeks, even as the team was able to keep itself afloat without him. The Cavaliers won all five games Garland missed, with four of them by double-digits.
That doesn’t mean the time off was wasted for Garland. Just because he couldn’t be on the floor playing didn’t mean he was unable to better himself.
“Super tough. Everybody keep asking like, 'How you doing? How's your body?' I'm like, I'm perfectly fine, it's my eye. And just sitting over there and just have to wait and just seeing everybody get loose warming up and going through full practice and stuff, it was just kinda aggravating,” Garland said.
Even though the time off meant Garland couldn’t play, it didn’t mean he couldn’t learn about his team and his opponents. Throughout the time he was out – the exception being the team’s second game in Chicago – Garland was frequently seen on the bench with his teammates. That wasn’t time wasted.
“We fight really hard,” Garland said when asked what he learned about the Cavs over the previous two weeks. “We're really starting to try to put 48 minutes together just of playing Cavaliers basketball. And that's what I'd seen over the time I was sitting out — that we just don't back down from no one. This group is just really hard-nosed, and any number is called, everybody's ready.”
On-court fit
In the five games that followed the Cavs’ opening night loss to the Raptors, Mitchell was tasked with carrying a relatively heavy burden. That won’t have to be the case now that Garland is back. That said, it’s fair to expect that night one of the pairing together for more than a half isn’t the ceiling. Even if it was a pretty good start.
Garland and Mitchell combined to score 54 points and hand out 18 assists with just one turnover. That’s the good news.
The bad news – or good news considering it came in a win – is that Mitchell shot just 11-of-27 and Garland was 9-of-20. There will be plenty of nights where this pairing surpasses the 54 points scored Wednesday on fewer than the 47 shots attempted. Neither of those two shot particularly well on a night when the Cavs as a whole didn’t shoot all that well, either. It’s an easier thing to stomach when it comes in a victory.
Watching how Garland and Mitchell grow together will show how far the Cavs can go this year. There has been chatter about the Cavs being able to go as far as Evan Mobley can take them, and that may be true in the long term, but this year, the Cavs will go where the guards take them.
“I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can do with them,” head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said after the win. “They're both so dynamic they both can create off the dribble. They both can catch and shoot and come off screens and shoot. And they're both phenomenal passers, so they can make their teammates better. You go 18 assists between the two of them and only one turnover. That's what you want from your guards. So they have the ability to make everybody better and make everybody's job easier because they are such a threat.”
The addition of Garland allows Mitchell to not have to carry as heavy as a burden as he has during the first portion of the season. In the first six games of the year, Mitchell’s usage rate entering the game against the Celtics on Wednesday was 32%, but it was at a more manageable 27% against Boston.
For all that went well, everything wasn’t seamless on Wednesday and it was never expected to be. This Cavs team, particularly the triumvirate of Mitchell, Garland, and Caris LeVert need to continue to log minutes together in meaningful games to maximize its potential.
“I think they fit pretty good,” Bickerstaff said. “I think they're dynamic, that know how to play off each other and they know how to include one another. But again, it's about the rotations and having the best five-man units. It's gonna take us a little bit of time to figure that out with Darius having missed that time. But we'll continue to work at it and see what's best.”
More than a [regular season] game
Seven games into the season is far too early to make any declarative statements about a basketball team, much less a team that has only had all of its top five players together for one full game.
That said, the Cleveland Cavaliers are for real.
On Wednesday night against the Celtics, Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland shared the floor for a full game and it was a night that didn’t feel like just another regular season game.
“Playoffs,” Mitchell said. “Yeah, definitely felt like a playoff atmosphere.”
If this were the playoffs, the Cavaliers would have a 2-0 lead on the Boston Celtics after Wednesday night’s overtime victory. This comes just five days after the Cavs went on the road and beat Boston in overtime last Friday.
In other words, this was the first stretch of the season that the Cavs had to prove who they are, going up against the defending Eastern Conference champs. They passed with flying colors.
When the Cavs traded for Mitchell this summer, the organization certainly envisioned packed nights at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse featuring close games against some of the best teams in the NBA. It’s hard to imagine that atmosphere was expected this quickly, or that the team would be immediately one of the NBA’s best.
It was also not a sure thing that the pairing of Garland and Mitchell would work as well as it did on Wednesday right away. Sure, it was the team’s seventh game, but it was the first time that the All-Star duo was able to spend extended time on the court.
Seven games certainly is too quickly to say that the Cavaliers are sure-fire NBA championship contenders, but with the evidence that’s been presented, it cannot be said otherwise, either.
It’s early, and jumping to conclusions about NBA teams in early November is rarely wise, but it might be a fair thing right now to think that the Cavs team is better than initially expected, or at least ahead of its expectations.
