CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – Kenny Atkinson felt Tuesday night’s game against the Celtics was a chance to prove how good they are.
This time, they weren’t good enough.
Jayson Tatum scored 22 and Derrick White 20 to lead the Boston Celtics to a 112-105 win over the Cavs at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Here’s the top Wine & Gold nuggets from Tuesday night.
Early hole – Boston controlled this one for much of the night and jumped out to a 20-point lead in the first half. “I felt like their energy was way higher than ours,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson said. “Offensive rebounds, aggressiveness. And that's part of the reason we got in a hole and then we started competing.” Cleveland climbed within 4, 99-95 with 4:37 to play in the fourth quarter but that was as close as they would get. “I think way we started the game, we put ourselves in a hole,” Jarrett Allen said. “We're always going to fight back. There was no worry about that. But when you fight to come back, it's hard against a team like that is hard. You put yourself in a bad position, but just got to start the game off right.” The cavs shot 39.6% from the field, including just 11 of 39 from 3. “We also didn't shoot the ball very well,” Jarrett Allen said. “A lot of our open looks didn't go in, but I think the key to this game was our slow start. They got the 20 point lead or something like that, and for any team to fight back from that, especially against the defending champs, it's tough to do.”
Team to beat – If the Cavs are to achieve their goal of getting back to the NBA Finals, they’re going to have to take out Boston. With this loss and the trade deadline approaching, do they have enough ammunition to do it? “We’re good, we’re good,” Mitchell said. Cleveland was without top defender Isaac Okoro as well as Dean Wade, two players that could have helped while Boston was at full strength. It would be easy to overreact to the loss to the Celtics and think that they need help at the deadline, but like Mitchell, Allen believes they have all they need. “Every single night we go out there, even if we're missing people, I feel like we have enough to win every single night,” Allen said. There is always the concern a trade could disrupt their chemistry too. “If you take away somebody, especially somebody in the locker room, a locker room presence, it's going to disrupt it,” Allen said. “We're all close to each other, but as you know, that's how things go.” It was just the Cavs 10th loss of the season but they fell to 5-5 against teams with at least 30 wins to date. “So you got to take that information, right? We have to look at it and see where we are against those teams,” Atkinson said. “But you also can't put too much into that, right? There's, it's a very small sample size. It's not a seven-game series, but you definitely look at it and say, man, kind of globally, why haven't we performed better against the elite teams?”
Big numbers – Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Allen showed up big, but it wasn’t enough. Mitchell tallied a game-high 31 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Allen finished with his team-leading 27th double-double of the season – 17 points and 18 rebounds. Garland added 25.
Tough night – All-Star Evan Mobley struggled all night finishing with just seven points and five rebounds. “These are the battles you go through and there's hurdles to get over and it's just part of it,” Atkinson said. “It's part of the learning experience. He'll learn from it. We'll learn for it from it because part of it's like we put him in the best position. We could have done something different to get him going, but Evan's a great player. He'll learn from it. He'll bounce back from it.” Mobley shot 3-14 from the field, including 0-4 from three. “Just at the reality of the NBA,” Allen said. “It's an up and down season. You're going to have good games and bad games. I feel like he can be more aggressive sometimes. I think next game he's going to come out and have a hell of a game.”
Money shot – For the third straight home game, a fan hit a half-court shot and won $10,000 between the third and fourth quarters.
Starting 5 – Atkinson started Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Max Strus, and Jarrett Allen.