You must have an active subscription to read this story.
Click Here to subscribe Now!
Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and thelandondemand.com. You can find him on Twitter at @RealDCunningham.
The Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Atlanta Hawks 120-118 on Tuesday night in a game in which the team only had nine available players due to a variety of injuries and illness to various members of the team.
Cleveland was missing two members of its starting lineup in Jarrett Allen, who was out with a groin injury, and Isaac Okoro, who left Sunday’s victory over the Rockets with left knee soreness. When that was combined with the team being without Dean Wade (illness) and Danny Green (health and safety protocols).
Donovan Mitchell was terrific for the Cavs, but his 44 points weren’t enough to lift them from a 12-point deficit in the second half. In the final minutes of the game, he hit a few big 3-pointers, but did turn his ankle with just over three minutes left.
Mitchell didn’t leave the game, but how his ankle responds to being rolled is the most important thing to come out of this game. If his ankle isn’t right when the playoffs arrive, the chances the Cavs have of advancing out of the first round are slimmed down significantly.
After the ankle injury, Mitchell limped down the court before a timeout was called. In the final three minutes he didn’t have quite the same burst offensively and wasn’t asked to do much defensively. In the final three minutes Mitchell scored five points on 1-of-5 shooting, included a missed 3-pointer that would have given the Cavs the lead with 12 seconds left and a heave from just beyond halfcourt that would have won the game at the buzzer.
The shot that Mitchell missed with 12 seconds left is the one that’s worth putting under the microscope. It’s fair to wonder that if Mitchell’s ankle wasn’t turned maybe he attacks the basket with the Cavs down just one instead of taking a step back 3-pointer from the left wing. That could be the result of having played nearly 40 minutes at that point, or a combination of that and the ankle.
If Mitchell’s ankle is OK, this loss is rather inconsequential. It makes it far less likely that the Cavs are able to climb up to third place in the Eastern Conference with this loss. That was unlikely anyways.
A very small bench
With Okoro, Allen, Wade, and Green all out and Sam Merrill, Dylan Windler, and Isaiah Mobley all on assignment with Cleveland’s G League affiliate, the Cleveland Charge, the Cavs only had nine players available on Tuesday night. Mitchell started alongside Darius Garland, Caris LeVert, Lamar Stevens, and Evan Mobley. Ricky Rubio, Cedi Osman, Mamadi Diakite, and Robin Lopez were the available bodies on the bench. Of those four only Lopez didn’t play.
The minutes for the bench did not go well. Each starter for the Cavs had a positive plus/minus at the end of the night, with the best number being a plus-12 by Mobley. The Cavs were outscored with each of the three players on the bench on the floor.
Rubio had the best night of any of the three bench players, scoring nine points in 19 minutes. The Cavs were outscored by five points when he was on the floor, but did outscore the Hawks by six with him playing in the second half. Things were not nearly as good for Osman and Diakite. In the 12 minutes Osman played on Tuesday, the Cavs were outscored by 19 points. Diakite played just under 13 minutes, that mostly lined up with Osman, and the Cavs were outscored by 17 points in that time.
This type of stat is not always something that tells the full story. And even here it doesn’t do that. There are nights when it feels accurate with the on-court performance. That was the case on Tuesday for Osman specifically.
With two starters out and two more reserves that could have filled minutes missing too, the Cavs needed much more than they got from the bench, and specifically Osman, Tuesday night.
Time management
The end of the game was not the Cavaliers’ finest moment in terms of time management. Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff called a timeout in order to challenge a foul on Mobley. That challenge proved to be unsuccessful, leaving the Cavs with just one timeout remaining for the final 2:14 of regulation.
Bickerstaff then called another timeout with 58.6 seconds remaining following a made jump shot by Atlanta’s Dejounte Murray that put the Hawks up by four points. The Cavs came out of that timeout and Mitchell made a 3-pointer to cut Atlanta’s lead to one at 119-118, but the Cavs did not have any timeouts remaining.
That meant that after Garland fouled Atlanta’s Trae Young with 3.1 seconds remaining, after Young was able to waste just over six seconds in the backcourt before Garland made contact with him, the Cavs couldn’t call a timeout to advance the ball into the front court when trailing by two points after Young’s free throws.
Having a timeout remaining in that situation greatly could have helped. Instead, once Mitchell received a pass from Rubio in the backcourt following Young’s free throw, the Cavs had to rely on a prayer.
Missed layups
As far as tangible, basketball reasons the Cavs lost to the Hawks, the inability to convert layups is near the top of the list.
The team finished the night 27-of-40 inside of the restricted area, but a handful of the misses were the sort of shots that Mitchell and Garland expect to make regularly. Not even the high degree of difficulty ones that those two routinely convert.
In the first half, the Cavs were just 19-of-31 inside the paint and shot 62.5 percent in the restricted area on looks that weren’t overly challenging.
About the standings
This loss makes it pretty difficult for the Cavs to jump up to third place in the Eastern Conference by season’s end. The schedule for the Philadelphia 76ers is still relatively tough, but with them holding the tiebreaker over the Cavs it adds an additional obstacle.
As of Wednesday morning, the Cavs have a record of 48-29 while the Sixers are 49-26. If Cleveland wins its final five games to finish with 53 wins, the Sixers would have to lose four of their final seven contests.
Cleveland is still 4.5 games above the New York Knicks for home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The magic number for the Cavs to clinch that is down to two. The Knicks will visit Cleveland on Friday night. A win by the Cavaliers in that game would clinch a top four seed in the Eastern Conference.