BOSTON – What a strange thing sports are.
One night, the Celtics can sweep the underdog Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 of their second-round NBA playoff series, confirming our preconceptions: The 64-win top seeds will make the Eastern Conference Finals. Forty-eight hours later, those Cavs are able to sweep away the overwhelming favorites with a 118-94 victory, tying the series and forcing us to question everything. Can they really win this?
Maybe I was reckless in letting myself be carried away by the ebb and flow. Perhaps Cleveland’s naivety helped them flip the script from one game to the next by 49 points. Perhaps Boston is dumber for its no-show nights than any other big team in recent memory. Maybe none of us will know anything until it happens.
You find out, because the Cavaliers are not going to help us.
“We definitely wanted to get one (in Boston),” Cavaliers wing Isaac Okoro said, stating the obvious (at least after Game 1), before running down his list of sports clichés. “We know it’s a game. We know we have to protect the court and just take each game, be physical and take it day by day.”
“I like how you incorporated that, too,” teammate Darius Garland said, tipping his cap to that last platitude.
They knew what they were doing. We’re all going through this rigmarole, jumping to conclusions every night, when we know it’s a seven-game series. The Celtics will have their ups and downs. So will the Cavs. Who do you really think wins in the end? After two divergent explosions, I doubt you’ve changed your mind.
After all, Boston defeated the Miami Heat in Game 1 of their first-round series, lost the next game by double digits, and dominated the next three games by a combined 68 points, just as we imagined. That Game 2 loss was an anomaly, in which Miami hit a franchise-record 23 3-pointers to Boston’s eight.
Those Heat didn’t have Jimmy Butler either, and these Cavs do have Donovan Mitchell, who played the game of a smart superstar. The Celtics were forcing the ball out of Mitchell’s hands, as he was the only one who hurt them in Game 1, so he obliged, dishing out six assists in a first half that ended in a 54-54 tie. Evan Mobley and Caris LeVert were the biggest benefactors of Mitchell’s gravity, combining for 27 points in the first half. And when his performance earned the respect of Boston’s defense, Mitchell returned to his usual work, scoring 23 of his 29 points in the second half. He took what he was given, to borrow a cliché.
“They defended me a little bit differently, a little bit higher in the pick-and-roll…so guys are open,” Mitchell said. “I just try to manipulate the game that way. And then in the second half, when you have guys that are making shots, it’s human nature to get back to your man and extend the play.”
For his part, Mobley felt his 5-for-5 effort in a miserable fourth quarter of Game 1 put him in a groove that continued into Game 2, when he scored a playoff career-high 21 points on 9 15 shots. .
“I feel like in the last game, in the second half, I got into the flow and started to see how they defended me, where I could score from, and I watched the video a little bit, went out and tried to do the same and attack those points,” he said. Mobley, who added 10 rebounds, five assists and two blocks. “And that is what I did”.
(While we’re breaking the fourth wall here, can the garbage time impulse be born? Can you sleep two nights in a row after a shooting streak? Can you figure things out with 25? It’s funny, these sports.)
This Game 2 could also be an aberration, as the Cavs shot 46.4% from 3-point range to the Celtics’ 22.9%, but it didn’t feel like one at the time. It felt like a beating, a beating that Boston’s Jaylen Brown called “unacceptable.”
Brown also said after Game 1, “It’s going to be tough for a team to have to beat us four times,” and he’s right on both counts. Your guess is as good as theirs as to whether anything from either game is replicable.
For one night, Cleveland’s game plan worked perfectly. The Cavs scored more points than they had in the entire postseason and held Boston to its fewest in the playoffs. That plan depended on Mobley in two aspects: 1) defensively, getting the Celtics out of the goal and letting him protect the rim, and 2) offensively, owning the paint.
The first part, well, everyone should have known, and the Cavaliers were quick to admit it.
“It’s a big benefit for us to have (Mobley) back,” said Cleveland coach JB Bickerstaff, whose team won its first playoff road game. “Our guys’ level of confidence and understanding that he’s there makes his job a lot easier and gives them more confidence on the ball against elite offensive players.”
The second part? LeVert could have let that go unnoticed by the cliché machine.
“They started the game with (Al) Horford as a five,” he said. “He’s their only rim protector on that unit, and then they have (Luke) Kornet on the second unit. And then after that, it’s just those two. I think we did a great job tonight of looking for mismatches. Evan did a great job punishing switches, and then when Horford was on me or other guards, I think we just did a great job beating him and finishing at the rim, so I think we put a lot of mismatches on them that they’re going to have to figure out. “
Hey, someone told us what they really feel, and that’s that the Cavaliers aren’t afraid of the frontcourt without Boston’s Kristaps Porziņģis. On the other hand, Boston’s Jayson Tatum said after Game 1: “We have a lot of different ways to win a game, and I would assume it’s hard for the other team to try to figure that out.”
So who is right? Maybe they both are. Maybe this best of seven will last longer than we thought.
We’ll have a better idea of how this series will play out after Game 3. So no more tweaking. Just basketball, where anything can happen but the best team usually wins the series. Or not. This is Sports.
