CLEVELAND, Ohio — Are you not entertained?
The Cavs became the first team in the NBA to clinch a playoff berth Wednesday night with their 112-107 victory over the Miami Heat at Rocket Arena. They are the second team in league history to have three 12-game win streaks in a season.
Each streak has felt different, and they haven’t gotten lost in the team accomplishments with a bigger goal still in mind.
The 15-0 streak to start the season was celebration worthy. Winning on a consistent basis in March has become the standard.
“This was an expectation,” Donovan Mitchell said about clinching a playoff spot. “Is it great that we did it in March? Yeah. But this is the bare minimum for us. I think a playoff berth is something that we’ve just come to be like, ‘This is who we are.’ Now it’s, can we be the one seed?”
Before the Cavs could officially punch their ticket, they sent their fans on a roller coaster ride of emotions.
It started in the first quarter when Cleveland displayed a video tribute to 2016 NBA champion Kevin Love. The former Cavalier received a standing ovation as he pointed to his ring finger to remind fans of the time that they had together.
Then the Cavs pulled away, exercising their slow start demons with a 36-point first quarter, rushing out to a 17-point lead in the second quarter.
But, as everyone in the building was well aware, Erik Spoelstra and the Heat wouldn’t go away so easily.
“I have so much respect for the program,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson said pregame. “I say this every time we play them and it’s worth repeating, they’re so well coached, they’re not going to beat themselves. And it’s always a challenge when you’re going against a great coach, and I don’t know if Spo gets enough credit for how much he adjusts.
“If we have to play this team in the first round, we know we got our hands full.”
The Heat stormed back in the second quarter with a 13-point run of their own to make it a four-point contest. The two teams scored the same number of points for the next two quarters heading into the finale.
Miami silenced the home crowd by suffocating the Cavs and holding them to seven points in the first six minutes of the final quarter while they went on an 18-7 run. They led by seven points as the minutes dwindled away in the fourth quarter. Bam Adebayo led the Heat’s offense with 12 of his season-high 34 points in the fourth.
The Heat’s zone defense is Spoelstra’s go to, and with the Cavs struggling from beyond the arc for most of the game, it was a tool well suited to stall Cleveland’s offense.
“My coach in college used to say zone is a talent equalizer,” Atkinson said. “Zone can make you hesitate a little if you’re not making shots and then you start missing shots. They probably knew we’re in three games in four nights, and it’s a brilliant tactical move.
“Typical Heat stuff. Shorthanded, toughness, resiliency. Guys playing over their head, Bam going off. But it’s not like we didn’t expect it. … We knew it was going to be a fight. Sure enough, it was. But it was good to win a tight game against this team.”
But Atkinson has proven capable of making adjustments on the fly.
He utilized De’Andre Hunter in the high post to create gaps in the defense and allow him to attack in the midrange or dish out to an open shooter when the defense collapsed. Hunter made all six of his shots from within the arc on Wednesday, and as his skills from deep have grown, he still hasn’t lost his bread and butter.
“That’s a shot I’m so used to taking. It’s a pretty easy shot for me,” Hunter said of the midrange. “Kenny might not like it that much, but if I’m making it, he can’t say too much. So, I just try to make ‘em all.”
Even Mitchell was able to find his way into the midrange with a hook shot over Adebayo that helped him get his offensive flow going.
He scored eight of his 26 points in the fourth, and Darius Garland helped facilitate the offense with six of his 10 assists in the final period.
And then, when it mattered most, the Cavs settled in on the defensive end to close the game.
They stopped the Heat on six consecutive defensive possessions, leading to an offensive run.
Atkinson went with a lineup that saw Jarrett Allen, the fourth member of the Core Four, on the bench yet again to close the game and had De’Andre Hunter next to Evan Mobley to stifle Miami’s offense.
The Cavs also put Max Strus on Bam Adebayo in closing scenarios to give him a different defensive look. Strus, a defensive pit bull, relished the opportunity to go against his former teammate.
“It was fun,” Strus said. “He was telling me to guard them all game. When it came down to it, I got the chance, and you could say the ball might have slipped out of his hands or he might have felt my presence.”
Then, on a potential game-tying 3-point attempt, Strus, who had also hit two huge 3s in the fourth, forced Duncan Robinson to step out of bounds and sent the arena into chaos.
Although the Cavs came away with a win, a tight game against a potential first round playoff opponent will be helpful for them in the long run.
They have grown beyond the need for comfort. They can win fast. They can win slow. They can win in a shootout or a grind-it-out slugfest.
“We’re not a cocky team, but we kind of know [who we are],” Atkinson said. “We’re getting to the point where we show zero kind of trepidation or we don’t really rush for the most part, and we get to what we want to get to.”
Wednesday night had a little bit of everything.
Up Next
The Cavs travel to Charlotte to play the Hornets on Friday. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. Eastern.
