Recap: Cavs 118, Hawks 120 (or, Sweat the Small Stuff)

2023-03-31 Off By Adam Cathcart

For last year’s Cavaliers, a late-season tilt with Atlanta would have been the highest of stakes — the two franchises were circling one another for play-in position, and clashed in the play-in itself. But in March 2023, the Cavs are way ahead of the Hawks, and Cleveland is incomparably more successful as a regular season team. Koby Altman’s rolling of the trade dice and mortgaging of trade capital for a top-tier guard duo has been far more effective thus far than Atlanta’s gamble on Dejounte Murray.

While the Cavs seemed to sleepwalk through parts of this game, and the Hawks could not even fill their own gym with spectators, this turned out to be a pretty entertaining match-up, certainly winnable for the good guys, but one that ultimately got away. The now-standard complaints about ref whistles and ridiculous calls all apply, but the Cavs lost this game with an irregular roster and at the free-throw line. Donavan Mitchell was sensational, and Garland and Mobley both played up to their normal high standards, but Atlanta had more punch when it mattered, and is looking ever slightly more dangerous to their would-be playoff or play-in foes.

First Quarter

Have you ever seen a game where Trae Young tried to take over early? He seems to default to passing mode at the start of contests, and this game was no exception. In fact, Young did not make a shot in the first quarter, and the only demonstrable effect he had on the game was to take a charge on Darius Garland without six ticks left on the clock. The Cavs, by contrast, came out a little bit slow but still in control of the game. Darius made several drives near the rim, and Mobley threw down a troika of dunks. Mitchell showed signs of having a big performance, but acting as the head of the snake for a motley second unit, he really needed to do so.

J.B. slotted in Osman as Mitchell’s main secondary creator, along with Rubio, Diakite, and Stevens. Several possessions went by without Rubio touching the ball, and a scrambly and improvised offense followed: an awkward Cedi stepback miss, a Cedi turnover on an attempted break, Rubio fumbling a pass in the corner. Diakite is a sparkplug but is almost never quite where Jarrett Allen would be, or operating and quite the same speed as his teammates. Meanwhile the Hawks started splashing threes, nearly all of them over Stevens close-outs.

With 2:40 left in the frame and the Hawks having pulled ahead, Osman starting clicking, nailing a 3 and intercepting a pass. His and LeVert’s harassment of Atlanta’s two B’s (Bogdonovic and Bey) meant that the Hawks three-point attempts dried up and they gave up turnovers instead. J.B. then further pressed the accellerator with a line up of LeVert, Osman, Garland and Rubio with Mobley in the middle. Trae Young took that lonely little charge to stem the Cleveland tide and the quarter ended at a draw, 24-24.

Second Quarter

Onyeka Okongwu had an outstanding contest, winning several of his mini-scraps with Mobley. He was also hitting his foul shots, indicative of what might be called one of the Cavs bigger small problems: Cleveland went 2-7 from the free throw line in this quarter, while Atlanta was a perfect 10-10. The Cavs were not moving the ball all that actively, with Garland not looking to distribute. At one point Darius did some canny moves to get Young switched onto a lone Stevens in the paint, but still didn’t feed the Cavs newest starter the ball. As both teams went small with Diakite and Okongwu acting as opposing centers, things started opening up inside, particularly for a fearless Dejounte Murray. J.B. called a time out, getting the Cavs into a calm masterpiece of work in the post by Evan Mobley, who sank a reliable bucket. What effective simplicity it was.

Lamar Stevens had a tough stretch around the 4 minute mark — he got called for his closeout on a made Murray three, which J.B. watched implacably. Stevens was then immediately attacked by Trae Young and whistled again for his 3rd foul. J.B. kept him in the game, but called him over and with some visible emotion gave the young man (rather than the refs) a talking-to. Meanwhile, Mitchell continued to amaze, getting into the paint at will and giving Cleveland fans a surplus of joy and hope even on his blown dunks, which were majestic failures.

The second half

The half began with the Hawks up 59-51, but Mitchell came out of the locker with a fierceness befitting a playoff game. His first defensive possession saw him scrapping with Okongwu down low, denying the Hawks’ sixth overall pick a pass from Capela and then running the floor for a three-point play. After yet more Mitchell heroics, Snyder called a timeout, and the game started to evolve into a Mitchell vs. Murray duel. Shots improbably fell, massive dunks were detonated, and Caris ‘Smooth Operator’ LeVert dropped in threes. Trae Young was still impotent offensively, going 0-7 at one point, and had resort to flailing in the general vicinity of Evan Mobley to get his foul calls.

After another impressive Mobley block, LeVert pushed tempo, going solo into three Atlanta defenders and giving Cleveland a rare lead. Since Evan Mobley is a man, not a machine, he needed a rest; Diakite and Osman came in and it was at this point that strange things began to occur. On defense, Osman pointed at Okongwu (apparently telling Diakite to block him out) and then blocked out only phantoms on the weakside as Okongwu flushed the rebound. LeVert was called for flicking his wrist after Okongwu pushed into him around a screen, then getting an additional tech for wondering what the hell had just happened. J.B. saved his anger for a (justified) no-call on a Garland flop in the paint. This was all very distracting and the Hawks ended the quarter up 10.

In the fourth quarter, Donovan Mitchell continued his transformation into a human cannonball into the paint, scoring, spinning, and dunking at will. None of the Cavs thought to imitate LeVert or Stevens by just trying to take the ball away with both hands — or perhaps Mitchell is simply too fast and strong to even try. In spite of the Atlanta pliancy toward Mitchell, the overall level of defense was, in fact, stepped up by both teams. If you like a 24 second violation when an opposing sharpshooter with a long Serbian name gets run off of the three point line and heaves the ball off the side of backboard, this was the game for you. Lamar Stevens was inspired, ripping the ball out of Murray’s breadbasket in the paint leading to a fast break in which Mitchell executed a nonchalant maître d’ shovel pass for a lightning Mobley dunk. (Somewhere Rajon Rondo, a restaurant and assists conaisseur himself, was applauding.) Gang rebounding commenced. Marring Stevens’ excellent defense on Murray on multiple possessions were two missed FTs with less than six minutes to go, but the Cavs were on a run and had momentum.

There was, as in any loss, some random stuff out of Cleveland’s control that helped to turn the game against the Cavs and led to their various mistakes coming back to haunt them. Both Mitchell and Garland tweaked their ankles in the final minutes, Mobley was whistled for Murray jumping nearly three feet into his landing area, etc. etc. Mitchell was dynamite in this game, but it was not quite enough to get the Cavs into the win column against his old coach.

Randoms

Okoro was layered in a green sweatsuit on the bench, out again with knee soreness in the aftermath of his breakout game-winning three pointer. This is a shame because Isaac, like his old teammate Colin Sexton, loves playing in Atlanta. Incidentally Sexton has played in 47 games this year, averaging about 20 minutes and 14 points per contest off of the Utah bench, at a nice 41% from three.

Late in the first quarter, Quin Snyder reached into his bag of tricks and produced some playing time for Vit Krejci, a second-year Czech prospect who started 8 games last year for OKC. He’s from Strakonice, a small city best known for motorcycles and breweries, but that was the last Czech town liberated by US troops prior to the German surrender. In the end he got about 9 minutes of run in this game, totalling a statistically small two rebounds and three fouls, but Snyder seemed mainly to want to try him out as a Mitchell stopper, quite a daunting assignment indeed.