The Cavs pushed the Celtics in their first matchup before beating Boston on Sunday as they’ve embraced their contrast of styles.
It’s rare that teams get a third chance. A second chance didn’t even appear possible for the Cleveland Cavaliers after the Donovan Mitchell era started with a 4-1 playoff loss to the Knicks team he admitted he thought he was headed to from Utah the previous summer. New York rumors would persist, and after the ensuing loss to the Celtics in the second round last year, Mitchell, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen’s futures were all in flux.
“It was pretty obvious what the game plan was,” Mitchell said, looking back at the 4-1 Boston win. “It was myself, it was DG, pick-and-roll, pick-and-roll, pick-and-roll.”
The Cavs moved on from head coach JB Bickerstaff, the architect of one of the league’s best defenses and Cleveland’s rapid rebuild from the second LeBron James era. His departure allowed the team’s Big 4 to buy into a new voice in Kenny Atkinson, who showed success in his brief Brooklyn head coaching stint before beating Boston in the Finals on Steve Kerr’s 2022 staff. Atkinson reunited with Allen, who he emphasized with the Nets, sold Mitchell on the virtues of moving off-ball more often and brought ideas to revitalize the team’s offense while staying true to their double-big, defensive identity.
The result — a 15-0 start, two close games against the defending champion Celtics and a win in the second after they overcame a 14-point second half deficit on Sunday. Cleveland ranks second in offense, 0.1 points per 100 better than Boston, and 11th in defense, 0.6 points per 100 behind the Celtics. The Cavs were missing nearly their entire wing depth in the first game. Boston was without Jaylen Brown and Derrick White in the second. They’re nearly even, and after a 2024 season where the Celtics already highlighted the Cavs, statistically, as their largest East threat, Cleveland ran it back and got better and look like a legitimate challenger.
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“The biggest thing we saw (in that series) was Evan Mobley’s growth and improvement,” Mitchell said. “You’re seeing how we’ve gone about our offense this year. It’s not just myself or it’s not just DG. It’s through everybody, but Evan’s been more aggressive, more dominant with the ball. We saw that in this series, sometimes when your guys are out or you lose a series, you see things in that. I think that was his growth to become this guy that he’s been on the offensive end. We all know what he is defensively … his confidence, his playmaking ability, making the game easier for us, you’re starting to see that this year.”
Mobley’s offensive limitations mounted against Al Horford and the rest of the Celtics’ size before May’s second round series. He had averaged 2.0 points per game fewer than his career average against Boston, but with Allen already out and Mitchell succumbing to several injuries in Game 3, Mobley took all the twos the Celtics wanted to give him in favor of threes late in the series. Mobley averaged 23.0 PPG and shot 62.5% in Games 3-5. Now, he’s initiating some sets, trying 2.0 threes per game and posting 17.7 PPG, up from 15.7.
Atkinson said he didn’t want to mess with what worked defensively for Cleveland, so that left him maintaining the team’s bigger lineup. When Isaac Okoro returned on a new contract and Max Strus went down with an ankle injury to begin the year, that often left the Cavs’ front court with limited shooting across the board, including to close Sunday’s win. Cleveland is actually shooting roughly the same number of threes per game as they did last year. Atkinson, to space the floor, instead implemented an aggressive series of cutting principles that he’s explained can be as effective as standing out on the three-point line.
You saw that on Sunday, Cleveland back cutting Drew Peterson at one point, Jayson Tatum staying attached to Allen in the corner despite him not being a shooting threat and Okoro rolling on the play where Mobley snuck behind his dive for the decisive dunk.
Then, the foul game began, 18 minutes of back-and-forth intentional fouls that prevented the Celtics from getting a three-pointer off behind by three after Payton Pritchard snuck one in running full court trailing by four. Atkinson, who’s acknowledged lessons learned from his Nets firing throughout this year, added fouling ahead by three to the list. And with Pritchard scoring to begin this year and part of Boston’s speed attack late in quarters, he did it early. Joe Mazzulla later tipped his cap to the strategy.
“I was like, ‘Screw that, we’re fouling,’” Atkinson said. “I don’t want to see Peyton Prichard come down and shoot a step back.”