PHILADELPHIA — It wasn’t easy, but the Cleveland Cavaliers saw their season-opening winning streak hit a baker’s dozen Wednesday night.
Thanks to Donovan Mitchell pouring in 13 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter, the Cavaliers became the sixth team in NBA history to win at least 13 consecutive games to begin a season by claiming a 114-106 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers, who were without All-Stars Tyrese Maxey, Paul George and Joel Embiid.
“We’re just sticking together,” said Darius Garland, who led Cleveland with 25 points. “Just taking it game by game. We know we’ve got a target on our back, so we’ve got to come in with that aggressiveness and that confidence that we’re going to win every game, and that’s what we’ve been doing. Even though like I said, long nights, not a lot of sleep, but we’ve got to stay together and just continue just to be great. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Of the previous five teams to start 13-0, four made the NBA Finals but only the 1993-94 Houston Rockets won the title, according to ESPN Research.
Despite Mitchell’s brilliance down the stretch, he was beating himself up after the game for passing out of a wide-open dunk late in the game in an attempt to chase the first triple-double of his career — something he said he apologized to his teammates for, and which he followed up by hitting a couple of 3-pointers to officially put the pesky 76ers away.
“I’m not going to lie,” Mitchell said with a sheepish smile. “It’s been eight years. I mean, if there’s any indication, was passing up a wide-open dunk. That’s out of character, it’s not me. That’s why I didn’t get it. You don’t get rewarded for not being yourself.
“It was a selfish moment. … We all have those moments, but I apologize to Cav fans, to my teammates. That’s not me. And that’s why I didn’t get it, because I go do something selfish. It wasn’t selfless, like I’ve been preaching myself.”
Mitchell, his coaches and his teammates were all able to laugh about the moment, however, because it came within a terrific stretch for the All-Star guard and the night resulted in the Cavaliers keeping hold of their unbeaten start to the season.
For much of this game, it wasn’t clear that would happen, as Cleveland struggled to get out of second gear against a vastly undermanned 76ers team, which is now 2-10 on the season and sits in 14th place in the Eastern Conference. Not only were the 76ers without Maxey (hamstring), George and Embiid (both out with left knee injury management), shortly before the game the team announced that backup center Andre Drummond would also sit out because of an illness.
As a result, Philadelphia opened the game against Cleveland’s pair of elite big men, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, with a frontline featuring 6-foot-7 Guerschon Yabusele at center and rookie Adem Bona backing him up. And yet, the 76ers managed to hang around thanks to yet another stellar game from rookie guard Jared McCain, who scored a career-high 34 points — the most for any rookie in a game this season — in his first career start.
Ultimately, though, Cleveland’s sheer talent advantage won out, as the Cavaliers opened the second half with a 12-5 lead to retake the lead, and then had the lead hover around five points throughout much of the fourth quarter to eventually squeeze the life out of the game.
“We had an honest talk at halftime,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “We showed some clips. They just weren’t feeling us. They were running where they wanted to. We had no ball pressure. Our energy was low, our physicality wasn’t great and these guys, they’re a winning group and they turned it up again.”
Still, the Cavaliers see room for improvement. While they’re obviously happy with their winning streak, they’ve now escaped with narrow victories over the Chicago Bulls, Brooklyn Nets and the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Milwaukee Bucks over the past 10 days. In many ways, it’s a perfect situation: keep winning games, while also identifying things to work on.
And they are doing it while continuing to widen the gap between themselves and the rest of the Eastern Conference. It’s only three weeks into the season, and already Cleveland has a six-game lead in the loss column over everyone but the defending champion Celtics, whom they face next Tuesday when they could be 15-0.
But for a team that’s hoping to move into the class of true championship contention this season, it’s adjusting to life as a team getting its opponent’s best shot every night — something Mitchell said he’s glad his team is getting the chance to experience now, even while knowing there’s a long way to go before the real tests begin next spring.
“That’s what you want,” Mitchell said. “At the end of the day, if you want to be the best, you got to beat the best. But in order to be the best, which we’re trying to continue to be, you got to go out there every night. And it’s a mental thing. How great do you want to be? Do you want to be satisfied? We’re hunting, but it’s also November. I keep telling everybody, let’s relax. I’m saying it is November. We’re not winning a championship right now. But these are good tests.
“The fact that we’re 13-0 is great. We could be 9-2. It doesn’t really matter to me. I think the biggest thing is how do we just continue to build the habits through getting every team’s best shot on a night-by-night basis.”
