INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — The unplanned timing was impeccable. The backdrop diabolical.
As sleepless Cavs star Donovan Mitchell reflected on the season’s abrupt exit, the muted TV in the corner of the media room inside Cleveland Clinic Courts, mounted above both of his brawny shoulders, with the full weight of this playoff loss thrust on them, was set to ESPN’s First Take. The panelists were bombastically debating a biting topic.
How much blame does Donovan Mitchell deserve for Cleveland’s latest postseason exit?
At one point during his 25-minute session with reporters on Wednesday morning, Mitchell glanced up and saw it. And then he chuckled — perhaps for the first time in about 24 hours.
“I haven’t watched this in a minute,” Mitchell said of the controversial programming. “We deserve it. We deserve it. We didn’t hold up our end. It’s just what it is. This is a blessing to be able to play this game, but you’ve got to take what comes with it.”
There was pain in Mitchell’s voice as he spoke. His eyes were droopy — a product not going to bed, choosing instead to relive this gut-wrenching series loss and rewatch Game 5 multiple times before driving to the practice facility for mandatory exit interviews. This was his eighth time advancing to the playoffs. He’s never been out of Round Two.
“Winning is not easy in this league,” Mitchell said. “Sometimes you have to be lucky. Sometimes you get unlucky. I think the biggest thing is I’m not going to stop. We’re not going to stop. I shouldn’t say this, but if I went another 10 years, eight years, and I was in the same spot, wouldn’t stop. I think that’s the only way to get past it is to keep going.
“Everybody’s going to feel free to say what they want to say about us as a group, about me as a player. I’m not going to stop. The day I do is the day I fail myself. Y’all are going to see me here at media day, smiling, being ready, giving you the same spiel about how you’ve got to respond. I’m not going to stop. We’re not going to stop. We’re going to figure it out.”
To this point, the Cavs haven’t.
A non-competitive series bullying two years ago by New York. A grueling regular season that led to exhaustion and prevented them from giving eventual champion Boston its best shot last May.
And now this.
There’s an unkind reputation that will follow Mitchell — and this Cavs team — for another year. There’s no choice but to accept that. Mitchell wants it that way. It’s what he told everyone in the locker room late Tuesday night.
His final message.
“The embarrassment, I hope we all feel it,” Mitchell explained. “It was a 64-win season. We were slated to be up here. We lost 4-1. We were the favorite. We were the one seed. It’s not like we were an eight seed trying to beat the one seed. We should feel that. It’s why I said that to the guys in the locker room. Feel this. Embrace it. This is part of it. You can’t run from this one. It’s going to be a loud summer. Use it as fuel because it’s the only thing you can do. I have no doubt that we’ll use this.”
Mitchell’s been through it before. Too many times, for his liking. But this was a deeper than usual despondency.
“I think it hurts because it’s just, it’s so fast. It just stopped. We believed that this was the year. That’s what sucks. This is what makes people who they are. This is what makes teams who they are. You reflect back on everybody saying we suck. You reflect on those moments when you get to the top, whenever that may be, but it sucks and it hurts because it just wasn’t supposed to end like this.”
Mitchell’s right. This year was supposed to be different. A team hardened by losses and better equipped for postseason success. A more trusted tactician. Health no longer an impediment. A deeper, more talented and balanced roster. The resume — and ingredients — to a long run.
Now everyone must come to grips with it ending at the same place — the Eastern Conference semifinals, woefully short of the stated goal, against an underdog opponent.
“Don was saying, ‘Let this eat away at you,’” reserve forward Dean Wade said of Mitchell’s message. “So, wake up every morning and use it as fuel.”
A singularly focused season, it was all about taking the next step, winning a championship. Everyone accepted final judgment was coming in spring. Fair or not, this season, once a fever dream, will come down to five confounding games. And the Cavs simply weren’t good enough.
“Feels like a wasted opportunity to me and that’s hard to kind of live with at this point,” said playoff-tested Max Strus who went scoreless in the series finale. “You fail in sports and it’s kind of what makes you better. I think everybody in this building would say we didn’t accomplish our goals, accomplish what we expected for ourselves and that stings and it burns.
“I just believe in this team. I believe in this locker room and this group of guys so much and the hard part about the NBA is you never know when you’re going to get that again. Just be real. You’re never going to have the same team again. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the offseason. You might lose guys, your locker room could look different the next year. It was just a year where I think we could have done some big things and we didn’t do it.”
An abandonment of their identity. A perplexing lack of focus at times. A mental strength collapse. An inability to finish. Flawed habits. Cracked composure. Untimely injuries. Playoff immaturity. Fragility. An opponent that ruthlessly preyed on every weakness and had the personnel to exploit them. Force negating skill.
It all defined the lopsided series. More lessons.
“We have to do it for longer,” Jarrett Allen said. “I feel like that was the name of the game for every game that we played during the series. I feel like we could have been more locked in mentally for longer, been more physical for longer. I could have been better. I haven’t watched film. I haven’t gone over everything that I could have done or didn’t do or did do. Not enough though.”
So, what is required to take that next step?
“We’ve got to get tougher — mentally and physically,” Strus said pointedly. “We know it’s going to be a grind. You can talk about it all you want, but until you actually show up and be about it, talking don’t really matter. Got to do it when it matters and we didn’t and that’s hard. We can sit here and talk about it all we want, but until we do it, nobody’s going to give us that respect. We all understand that. Respect isn’t given. Got to earn it and that’s what we’re going to have to do.”
The question now is whether this franchise learns from its consecutive playoff failures — and whether its capable of making the necessary fixes, especially given some pretty rigid salary cap limitations.
“Everybody’s got to look at themselves in the mirror,” Strus said. “Try to figure out what they can do better, bring to this team and help this team win at a high level.”
All-Star point guard Darius Garland vowed to do just that after a dreadful series impacted by a sprained big toe on his foot that required him to play with a spacer in between his toes and a metal plate in his shoe.
“Look myself in the mirror and see what’s inside and go with that,” Garland said. “I definitely wasn’t myself out there. It was pretty uncomfortable, but like I said, trying to do anything to win the game. I’m just happy I got out there because I didn’t want to lay them out. Even if we weren’t all a hundred percent, we were all out there trying to put our best foot forward, and that’s all we can ask for. So, I’m happy I went out there. It doesn’t matter if I was hurt or not. I’m happy I went to battle with my guys. They wanted me out there. I wanted to be out there. And everybody else that was banged up, I’m happy that they came out to battle and participate in the war.”
As is typically the case, Mitchell carried most of the weight for this setback — despite averaging 34.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists while erupting for a pair of 40-point games.
“There’s no reason he should be doing that,” Strus said of Mitchell. “That guy literally put us on his back too many nights and we all understood that. We needed to be better as a team. All year it was about depth, it was all about strength in numbers and everything like that, and there’s no reason you can say when things are going good that it’s all because strength in numbers and then when things go bad, it’s because of one person. We all needed to do our part better. Guys needed to step up and play better. We didn’t and that happens.”
Throughout this 64-win season, Mitchell repeatedly pointed to the team’s response — in the face of prosperity and adversity. That’s what mattered most. It became the team’s credo.
Given multiple opportunities in the conference semifinals, the Cavs never responded. Not the way supposed title contenders do — or should, anyway.
There’s always next year. Isn’t that the Cleveland way?
“Guys will be hungry,” NBA champion Tristan Thompson said. “I know guys are pissed. They’re angry. They’re upset. I think guys will be super motivated this summer. It’s going to make us very dangerous.
“You got to starve before you eat. Got some hungry (expletives).”
