Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers outlast Celtics: takeaways

Celtics

Boston led by 22 points very early on Friday, but it didn’t take Cleveland long to get back into the game.

The Celtics got a huge performance from Jayson Tatum, but the Cavaliers pulled away late on Friday to claim a 123-116 victory.

Here are the takeaways.

Donovan Mitchell keeps demolishing the Celtics’ defense.

Friday’s game will give fans on both sides plenty of ammunition to argue over, but one thing has remained consistently clear on Cleveland’s side, dating back to last season: Donovan Mitchell is a real problem against the Celtics, and he has been for a while.

The Celtics generally struggle against twitchy guards, and Mitchell is as twitchy and explosive as they get – for evidence, look no further than his first half dunk on Derrick White where he had the presence of mind (and the physical ability) to pull the ball all the way over his head to avoid the shot block and power it down with both hands.

The biggest issue with Mitchell, of course, is the pick-and-roll. He’s quick enough to burst into the paint, strong enough to initiate and power through contact, skilled enough to score, and savvy enough to grift his way to the free-throw line. That’s a potent combination, and the Cavaliers needed every bit of his 41-point outpouring on Friday.

Darius Garland is a good scorer, too, but he’s target practice on defense. Evan Mobley is important to the Cavaliers, but he’s often muted offensively. The beating heart of the Cavaliers is Mitchell, who seems to thrive in the biggest moments and will be the biggest question mark if these teams – as expected – see each other again in a few months.

The Cavaliers picked on a matchup that might not be there much.

The Celtics and Cavaliers are a very odd pairing because both teams love to hunt matchups, and both teams have some preferred matchups.

The Cavaliers took massive advantage of their preferred matchup in the fourth quarter as Mitchell and Garland took turns trying to make sure Sam Hauser loses some sleep on Friday night.

Hauser’s defense was much maligned early in his career, and he didn’t deserve all the vitriol, but Friday’s game was a reminder that there are players he simply can’t handle. The Cavaliers targeted him over and over, and he got beat nearly every time. He did get a couple of stops, but as the fourth quarter wound down, it became increasingly clear that the Cavaliers were going to win if Hauser remained on the court, and with Jrue Holiday out, the Celtics didn’t have a ton of other options.

Hauser, of course, will not be the answer in a playoff series unless things have gone very wrong for the Celtics, and Joe Mazzulla almost seemed willing to let a regular-season loss slip away rather than tip his hand defensively against Mitchell and Garland at all.

The Cavaliers should (and certainly looked like they do) feel good about Friday’s win. The Celtics shot a high percentage from three, jumped out to a huge lead and got big performances from their stars, and the Cavaliers won anyway.

But you can bet that Mazzulla has plans for defending the Cavaliers’ stars that he opted not to unveil on Friday.

You really don’t have to take Jayson Tatum slander seriously.

In the first quarter, as the Celtics raced out to a big lead, Tatum caught a pass in the corner, buried a 3-pointer and forced the Cavaliers to call timeout. As Tatum made his way to the bench, he could be seen waving his arm dismissively and yelling something that looked suspiciously like “F*** out of here, man.”

We would never deny Tatum his opportunity to be petty – NBA players love to take any amount of negativity and turn it into motivation, and Tatum certainly is no exception.

But for everyone else who follows the Celtics online, one thing is abundantly clear: You do not have to take the Jayson Tatum slander seriously. You don’t need to argue with strangers about his aura, or perceived lack thereof. You don’t need to debate whether he’s one of the best players in the world (he certainly is, and you can make one heck of a case for him).

The truth is, you do not need to defend Tatum online because anyone making a case against him isn’t really serious about basketball. Tatum’s resume is unimpeachable. We’ve seen him carry the Celtics deep into the playoffs. We’ve seen him come up huge in the biggest moments. We’ve seen him score 60 points in a game, 50 in a play-in victory, 51 in a Game 7.

The Celtics fell on Friday, but it had nothing to do with Tatum. He poured in 46 points, including 18 in the first quarter, and he came up one assist short of a triple-double with 46 points, 16 rebounds.

The missing assist was a little bit symbolic – Jaylen Brown showed up, as did Derrick White, but the Celtics got contributions from almost no one else, and their bench was decimated by Cleveland. Tatum backpacked his team into a competitive showdown with the fully healthy Cavaliers, who don’t really have an answer for him, but he will need more from his teammates.

Jaylen Brown was excellent, too.

Brown was similarly dominant, although he was limited a bit by foul trouble, pouring in 37 points on 13-for-24 shooting in just 34 minutes. When Brown makes 3-pointers, he’s an incredibly difficult cover, and he shot 4-for-6 from behind the arc on Friday, propping the Celtics up when Tatum went to the bench. 

The Celtics led by 22 very early.

The Celtics raced out to the kind of big early lead that just never seems to hold in the modern NBA, but they looked impressive doing it. The ball was popping around the floor, the players and the ball were moving well, the mismatches looked like they will be a significant issue in the postseason, and the Cavaliers looked shell-shocked.

The problem with the modern NBA is that a really good team like Cleveland never looks shell-shocked for long, and a really hot team isn’t going to stay hot for an entire game. The Cavaliers immediately started trimming the lead back down, and they were within 10 by halftime.

At this point, it should be considered a surprise if an NBA team actually holds on to a big first-quarter lead. The Cavaliers did well to get themselves back into the game after the Celtics started the third quarter strong, but big first-quarter waves tend to wash themselves back out to see within the normal ebbs and flows of an NBA basketball game.

A tough stretch continues.

The Celtics’ road ahead doesn’t get any easier: They face the Nuggets on Sunday afternoon in a 1 p.m. showdown at TD Garden. The Trail Blazers will be in town on Wednesday.