On Saturday evening, Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers fell back to earth with a disappointing home loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals series between the two teams. Mitchell was once again brilliant in this one, nailing six threes in the first half alone before running out of gas a bit down the stretch, but he did not get much of any help from his Cavs supporting cast, while the Celtics used a well-rounded attack led by stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum to get back into the win column.
Although it would be hard to downplay just how good Mitchell was for the majority of the game on Saturday, after the game, the superstar shooting guard did share the one key regret he had over the course of the 48 minutes.
“#Cavs guard Donovan Mitchell said that he went for a few of what he called a few too many ‘home run plays’, like when he pulled up from three and fired off an air ball,” reported Evan Dammarell on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter.
Mitchell also noted how the Cavs seemed to miss some of the shots they were able to knock down in the team’s surprising Game 2 road victory vs the Celtics last Thursday.
“I just think we didn’t hit the same shots we did [in Game 2],” Mitchell said, per Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “For us, just being able to finish … we missed a lot of shots at the rim, myself included, missed a lot of shots that I think we just got to make. And also we didn’t really shoot that great from 3, but not a bad percent, but we didn’t shoot that well. So I think those are different things and we got to get our looks and take them, because if we don’t, we’re driving back into the crowd and they want us to. So being able to take our shots, when they’re open.”
Can the Cavs bounce back?
In order for Cleveland to bounce back and tie the series at 2-2 on Monday evening at home, they will need a lot more help from their supporting cast, including most notably Evan Mobley and Darius Garland, both of whom had relatively quiet evenings on Saturday after strong Game 2 performances.
Garland in particular looked very passive during the early portions of the game on Saturday before finally notching up the aggressiveness down the stretch, when the game was already essentially out of reach for the Cavs. Perhaps most concerning for Cleveland is that Mitchell has yet to have an “off night” in this series, and if that occurs on Monday, the Cavs could be looking at a 3-1 hole going back to Boston for Game 5 on Wednesday (not that the Cavs have never pulled off a comeback magnitude in their franchise history before).
In any case, Game 4 is slated to get underway on Monday evening at 7:00 PM ET from Cleveland and will be carried nationally by TNT.
