The Cleveland Cavaliers made a mess of themselves in crunch time of their 112-110 loss to the Toronto Raptors courtesy of a game-winner from RJ Barrett. It seemed like the Raptors were going to throw their whole season away with a Jamal Shead miss from the charity stripe to keep the Cavs in the lead, 110-109. But then they turned the ball over on the ensuing possession, leading to the Barrett triple that bounced high off the back iron and into the net.
Barrett did nail the game-winner, but the Cavs still had a chance to win the game with a little over one second left in the game. One would think that the ball would go to someone like Donovan Mitchell or Max Strus (James Harden was the one inbounding the ball), but the Raptors cut off the passing lane to the Cavs’ more esteemed marksmen. Harden decided to just throw the ball to Mobley, who came up short with his game-winning attempt.
After the game, Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson gave his thoughts on what went wrong for his team on the final possession.
“We were looking for Donovan [Mitchell] to come off the curl screen. We’ve run it before and it was really a two or a three option,” Atkinson said in his postgame presser, via @dillybar2145_ on X (formerly Twitter). “Not a great look — decent look from Evan.”
Mobley did make three triples on the night and finished with a game-high 26 points, but he’s not the most proficient of marksmen from deep. He shot just 29.7 percent from deep during the regular season, and he entered Game 6 shooting just 35.7 percent from beyond the arc.
The Cavs might have been better off having Harden as an option to shoot the ball as well instead of having him inbound the ball. Perhaps having Dennis Schroder to inbound would have been more ideal, as with one second, Harden could not have shot the ball as the inbounder with that much time left on the clock.