BOSTON – I am of the strong belief that “playoff atmospheres” only exist in the actual playoffs.
There are, of course, games during the NBA’s regular season that feel bigger than others. Rematches, rivalries, and in the modern game, reunions of star players against their former teams after shocking trades. But when anyone, and I don’t care who, describes 1 of 82 as a “playoff game” or says the air in the arena had a “playoff feel,” well, no. It just isn’t the same.
Players sit out in February when they wouldn’t in May; coaches spend a couple hours preparing for game No. 59, whereas they get days to prepare for Game 1 of a playoff series.
I could go on, but it’s just after midnight on Saturday, every bar in Boston sounds like there are subwoofers under every stool, and we have the Cavs’ impressive 123-116 win over the Celtics to get to.
The win meant Cleveland split the season series with the defending champs at two games apiece. Asked time and again on Friday if getting this particular victory mattered as a mental boost, an extra feather in their collective caps, the best anyone on the Cavs’ side could muster was a “yeah, kinda.” Coach Kenny Atkinson’s take that this was not a must win for Cleveland was on point, because what happens in games during the regular season between teams that meet in the playoffs are not necessarily predictors for what will happen in those postseason series.
Cavs rally from 22 down, beat Celtics for largest team comeback in 11 years
Regardless of what took place at TD Garden Friday night, the Cavs had already shown themselves to be a deeper, smarter, more cohesive group than the team that lost to the Celtics in five games of the 2024 Eastern Conference semis. They had proved they should be competitive in a likely conference finals against the Celtics. And Boston, of course, has shown it still has the firepower, toughness and depth to repeat as champions, no matter how far behind Cleveland the Celtics are in the standings.
And I still would have felt this way had the Cavs buckled under the pressure of the “avalanche,” to use Atkinson’s word, the Celtics hit them with during the first five minutes of this game. Seven 3s and a 25-3 lead before the clock hit 7:00 in the first quarter. When Atkinson called his second timeout of the game, after just 4:49 had gone by, the noise in TD Garden sounded like a playoff ga … I mean, it was really, really loud.
I’ve been in arenas like this, where the home team is a great team, and it opens up a can of 3s and dumps it on the bewildered visitors. The Warriors used to do this all the time during their dynasty, and it never ended well for the team getting all those 3s dumped on its head.
With the proliferation of the 3-pointer in the modern game, comebacks like the one the Cavs answered with Friday are supposedly more possible, though this was the Cavs’ biggest comeback in 11 years. When the game was over, Cleveland made as many 3s as the Celtics (17), all the more impressive considering Boston had 14 of those suckers at halftime.
But the Cavs’ ability to shake off such a poor start, with the Boston crowd collectively frothing at the mouth, is the first impressive part of this win.
“We’re super resilient,” said Darius Garland, one of Cleveland’s three All-Stars who played like it on Friday, with 20 points. “We’re not about to just let a game just fall away from us like that, or at least try not to.”
The Cavs weren’t just down by 22 in the first quarter; they also trailed by 17 in the third. They cut their deficit to two points in the second quarter, then watched Boston (try to) pull away again. So really they mounted multiple serious comebacks in the same 48-minute game.
A turning point, the Celtics argued, was Jaylen Brown picking up his fourth foul with 7:08 left in the third quarter and missing the rest of the period. Boston was up 14 when Brown went out and led by just three points at the end of the third.
Except, Brown was just the second All-Star to pick up a fourth foul and miss most of the quarter. Evan Mobley did that too, only he checked out of the game with 10:03 remaining in the period and didn’t come back until the start of the fourth.
This is the second impressive part of Cleveland’s comeback – what Mobley did when he returned.
Serve: Brown opened the quarter with a 15-footer.
Counter: Mobley bombed a 3.
Serve: Mobley ties the game with a hook.
Counter: Brown puts Boston back up by 1 with a free throw.
Serve: Mobley ties it again with a free throw.
Serve (pretend it’s volleyball, with rally scoring, so the metaphor still works): Mobley puts the Cavs ahead for the first time with another 3.
Cleveland never trailed again from that point.
“He changed the game,” Atkinson said of Mobley.
Celtics brush off Cavs’ stunning comeback, prepare for potential playoff meeting
It wasn’t just that Mobley came off the bench cold, having sat for 10 game minutes, to score 10 points in a row. Or that he tallied 11 points total in the fourth, to go with eight rebounds. Or that he took – and canned – two 3s after sitting for that long. It’s that all of this happened after Mobley had what everyone agreed was a pretty bad start to the game.
Through three quarters, Mobley had more fouls than field goals. Garland said he “tried getting (Mobley) to wake up a little bit in the first half,” to no avail.
Mobley, the Cavs’ second All-Star this season, has been absolutely brilliant since the All-Star break. In fact, his last bad game was before the break, against the Celtics, in the last game Cleveland lost. Mobley shot 3 of 14 in that game, and seemed a step slow and soft in a big game. That’s what it looked like on Friday, until the fourth quarter came around.
“The game rewards people when they stick with it,” Mobley said. “Just believe in myself, that’s the biggest thing. When you believe in yourself, you feel like you can do anything. Even with this slow start to the game, just believing in myself the entire game and eventually things started falling, and I think that’s the biggest factor in getting where you want to get to.”
The Celtics’ Jayson Tatum enjoyed one of the best games of his career – season highs in points (46) and rebounds (16) to go with nine assists. Brown, despite missing most of the third quarter, scored 37 points. They are Boston’s two All-Stars and two of the very best players in the NBA. On Cleveland’s side, Garland is an All-Star, but no one would call him a top-10 or -15 player right now.
Mobley said it himself to The Athletic – in five years he sees himself, or Victor Wembanyama, as the NBA’s best player. But he’s not there yet. Which leaves the Cavs with Donovan Mitchell as their guy who has to be the alpha.
Mitchell responded to all of this mess – the bad start, the crazy crowd, Tatum and Brown – with 41 points, 26 after halftime. And that’s the third truly impressive item to takeaway from Friday.
“You know, I talk about Evan taking over the game in the fourth … but for some reason, Donovan, and I’m the most culpable, I don’t give him enough credit, it’s crazy … but he was phenomenal,” said Atkinson, in his stream-of-consciousness dialogue that would make William Faulkner proud.
Mitchell is “supposed” to do this. He’s made six-consecutive All-Star games. But living up to the burden of expectation is difficult, and in a game that looks like it’s about to slip away before all the fans have found their seats, a veteran like Mitchell could easily do some math and decide this one wasn’t worth saving. Instead, he broke open the closet with a hatchet and tossed enough life rafts into the water to keep the Cavs afloat.
Mitchell had an impressive run in the third quarter to get the Cavs close, and then when Brown tied the game for the Celtics later in the fourth, Mitchell responded with five consecutive points to ice the game. He shot 13 of 26 from the field, 5 of 12 from 3, and made 10 of 11 free throws, which suggests Mitchell was working for his shot all over the floor. He went to the rim as hard and as often as he searched for a 3-point shot.
“It was like, no championship is won tonight,” Mitchell said. “So kind of just saying, like, look, all right, we got punched in the mouth. What are we going to do about it? You know what I mean? Like, how are we going to respond? And, that’s been my biggest message. You know that, like, I said that about every game. And tonight was another example, just a larger audience.”
Yeah, I like that. It was a bigger audience – another national TV game for the NBA’s best team. That’s four in a row for the Cavs on either ESPN or TNT.
The Celtics didn’t have Jrue Holiday (finger injury) and Kristaps Porziņģis (illness); if it was a playoff game, both probably would have played. But it wasn’t a playoff game, was it?
Just another impressive night in an impressive regular season that is certainly enough to generate real hope for what’s to come.
(Photo of Donovan Mitchell: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
