Category: Sports News

CLEVELAND — The leap between being a great team and being a championship-caliber one is the hardest to make. This series shows that the Cleveland Cavaliers have a lot of work to do before they can say they’re on that level.

This was supposed to be a somewhat even matchup with the New York Knicks, but it wasn’t.

The Knicks dominated every aspect of the series since the fourth quarter of Game 1. That continued as they completed their sweep with a 37-point victory in Game 4.

The ending to this season was always going to be messy, but this was much worse than anyone could’ve reasonably expected.

This series, and the playoffs as a whole, were a referendum on Donovan Mitchell.

This group was constructed around Mitchell. Each player was brought here because they either cover up a weakness or accent one of Mitchell’s skills. So when Mitchell isn’t playing at a star level, things can get sideways quickly.

It’s not impossible for elite playoff teams to gameplan around a 6’2” guard who can only score at a high level. We’ve seen this throughout his four postseason runs in Cleveland, and did so again here.

Each team the Cavs ran into this postseason was able to take Mitchell out of his comfort zone.

The Toronto Raptors were physical at the point of attack and able to switch every on-ball screen. The Detroit Pistons put one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, Ausar Thompson, on Mitchell, making it difficult for him to get to his spots. And then the Knicks just crowded the paint, making it difficult to get anything going inside.

This all added up to Mitchell accumulating his lowest point total and the least efficiency in his last three postseason runs.

Throughout the playoffs, the Cavs were better with Mitchell off the court than they were with him on. They lost the minutes he’s played in 12 of the 18 postseason games. This includes every matchup against the Knicks.

Mitchell had good moments — including an impressive Game 7 in Detroit — but they made it to this point despite his play on the court, not because of it. That’s a problem.

Game 4 showed this again.

It was a four-point game when James Harden subbed out with three minutes left in the first quarter. Evan Mobley and Mitchell anchored a hybrid bench lineup without him. And by the time Harden came back into the game, it was a 12-point game.

This had been happening all postseason. Mitchell couldn’t elevate groups when Harden isn’t on the court, even when he’s going up against other teams’ bench units. As a result, the Cavs are losing the minutes Mitchell plays without Harden by 9.4 points per 100 possessions going into Game 4. Overall, the Cavs were outscored in when Mitchell is on the court by 1.4 points per 100 possessions.

It’s fair to wonder if the Mitchell and Harden pairing can ever work in the postseason. Far too often, the flaws of the backcourt — mostly on the defensive end — came through while their strengths didn’t. Those lineups weren’t outstanding offensively, and didn’t hold up well on the other end.

The duo didn’t have much time to gel in the regular season. Figuring out an entirely new playing style with under 1,000 regular-season possessions is nearly impossible. That alone could give you hope that they could improve.

“He’s helped this group and myself get somewhere we’ve never been,” Mitchell said of Harden. “And that’s with three months of work, three months of prep, three months of whatever. Now, you have a full summer of conversations, of film, of working out together, training, you have a whole year now.”

All that said, banking on them doing so is far from a guarantee, given both players’ track record in the postseason and Harden’s age.

For as inconsistent as this postseason was, the Cavs don’t get to this point without Mitchell.

This regular season was a disaster in so many ways. A combination of injuries to key players, the offseason acquisitions not living up to their standards, and a general step backward from most of the remaining pieces resulted in this team being 17-16 just after Christmas. For context, they didn’t lose the 16th game of the season before until the beginning of April.

This could’ve, and honestly, should’ve been a lost season. However, it wasn’t.

“He’s the number one reason we went to the conference finals,” head coach Kenny Atkinson said of Mitchell. “He took it to another level. Led even better than he did the year before. Adapted to a new roster. … With his communication, his leadership, he kind of made that work on the fly.”

For as frustrating as it ended, you don’t accidentally make it to the conference finals. That’s something you have to earn, and the Cavs proved something that they haven’t previously during this postseason run. However, just getting to the conference finals wasn’t the end goal, and there’s no guarantee that you will get back to that point.

This all makes deciding what they should do in the summer so much more difficult.

The argument for making a drastic change is straightforward. We’ve seen this group not play up to their standards in too many postseasons to run back the same basic two guard, two big structure and expect the result to be different.

Figuring out the perfect move that gets them over the hump isn’t.

Do you try to make a big swing for a player like Giannis Antetokounmpo? This would require giving up multiple key players and draft picks to do so, and then you’d have to figure out a way to retool the roster around a new number one.

Would doing everything you could to convince LeBron James to return for one more go around turn them into championship contenders?

Is there a way to retool and get younger, while not losing your standing in the conference?

There is still merit to wanting to avoid shaking things up too much. After all, this run showed that they can have postseason success. If they handle business quicker and shoot better against New York, this would be a very different conversation. A full offseason with Harden trying to figure out a more concrete playing style on both ends of the floor should help as well.

“I have no doubts that this group can get there,” Mitchell said. “I’ve said this all year. I think the biggest thing is you use this as a learning lesson. It’s a tough learning lesson, but now we know. … This team that we faced had to go through this. They’ve been together and had to go through this tough experience. So this is our turn.

“And I’m sorry for the city of Cleveland, for it to be like this, a sweep, like, that’s ass. But I told y’all last year, and I’ll say it again, we’ll be ready, and we’ll be hungry, and be locked in.”

Can Joe Mazzulla find the winning formula again for the Celtics? originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Celtics were nearing the finish line of this year’s 56-win regular season, a campaign that far exceeded what most outsiders thought possible given the jarring roster changes.

But as we peppered head coach Joe Mazzulla with questions about the progress of all the players who elevated to larger roles, he turned introspective.

“I think that winning is obviously something that you’re going after, but you’re really going after the process of growth and the process of being in a competitive arena and having competition expose who you are as a person and a player — the good and the bad,” Mazzulla said. “And I think that journey is more fulfilling than the wins.”

It’s a quote that stuck with us, especially after Mazzulla’s team came unglued and fumbled away a 3-1 series lead against the Philadelphia 76ers en route to an unceremonious first-round playoff exit, staining what otherwise was an overachieving season.

In the aftermath of Boston’s collapse, Mazzulla again pondered the duality of his job.

He suggested he felt as empty after Boston’s 2024 title season as he did in the years when the team fell short of its perpetual championship goals. Now, he hinted at a struggle to balance the obvious pain of a disappointing finish with all the high points in the journey before it.

On Tuesday, Mazzulla could become the first Celtics coach to win NBA Coach of the Year since Bill Fitch in 1980. Mazzulla would be only the fourth Celtics coach to win the award, joining Fitch, Tommy Heinsohn (1972-73) and Red Auerbach (1964-65).

Receiving the honor in the aftermath of Boston’s early exit won’t sit well with Mazzulla, who routinely bristled at talk of the award during the season. Mazzulla, who would prefer the organization as a whole be lauded for its regular-season success, is likely focused on what’s ahead and not what’s behind him.

Competition exposes who you are — the good and the bad. And despite his overwhelming successes — guiding the team to Banner 18 in 2024, and all those regular-season wins — the 2026-27 season will force Mazzulla to prove yet again that he can learn and grow from notable missteps.

The coach who so routinely pushed all the right buttons while leaning on every player on his roster at various points of the 2025-26 season must assess why, for the third time in four years, he wasn’t always able to find the right combinations on the big stage.

Mazzulla’s .726 regular-season winning percentage ranks third among all Celtics coaches, trailing only K.C. Jones (.751 over five seasons) and Fitch (.738 in four seasons). Fold in the playoffs and only Jones (.729 winning percentage over 512 games) has a better winning percentage overall than Mazzulla (.711 over 385 games).

The numbers make it impossible to suggest that Mazzulla hasn’t routinely put his team in position to be successful. The Celtics stiff-armed any suggestion of a gap year in large part because Mazzulla leaned heavily into bringing the best out of the younger players on Boston’s roster.

The one question heading into next season, with a harsher spotlight on Mazzulla despite all his successes, is whether he can be quicker to embrace change on the playoff stage.

It does not seem unfair to suggest that Mazzulla can sometimes be stubborn. He’s firm in his beliefs and surely isn’t afraid to voice them. While it’s also much easier in hindsight to second-guess some of his playing-time decisions in the aftermath of recent playoff exits, there does seem to be one theme in Boston’s recent playoff demises, and that’s a slow trigger on changes.

For much of the 2025-26 season, Mazzulla leaned into his team’s depth and thrived by finding the combinations that gave the team the best chance to win on a night-to-night basis. As the Sixers series slipped away, Mazzulla was perhaps a bit slow to try the curveballs that he routinely mixed in during the regular season.

He waited until Game 7 to fully experiment, trotting out a unique and unproven starting five, giving rookie Hugo Gonzalez his first real minutes of the series, and finally shifting fully away from midseason acquisition Nikola Vucevic while leaning on smaller lineups.

During the 2025 playoffs, Kristaps Porzingis was a shell of himself while battling a mystery illness that sapped his energy and left him inefficient on the floor, yet Mazzulla gave him every opportunity to fight through. In 2023, the Celtics dug themselves an 0-3 hole in the East Finals against Miami, eliminating all margin for error the rest of the way before falling short when Jayson Tatum limped through Game 7 after an early ankle sprain.

Mazzulla’s overall coaching acumen is not in judgment here. His Xs and Os are fantastic and Boston’s after-timeout success routinely showcases his white-board wizardry. Mazzulla has elite feel for his team over the course of an 82-game season.

The question is simply whether can he get better at the chess match when the playoffs arrive.

For those who want to rail against Mazzulla’s play style, we’ll kindly push back. The term “Mazzulla Ball” has become the blanket term for Boston’s 3-point heavy offensive style. But we’d suggest that Mazzulla’s bigger focus is on the margins as a whole, and Boston’s 3-point totals are more of a reflection of the roster delivered to him.

Yes, Mazzulla needs to be better at imploring his players to generate additional looks near the basket when perimeter shots are not falling. But we shake our head at the, “Too many 3s!” crowd when it’s clear that Boston’s roster is constructed to maximize that math game.

If the Celtics want to increase rim attempts, it’s also on president of basketball operations Brad Stevens to craft a roster with players who are able to create better off the dribble and get inside the paint with more frequency. The best shot for the Celtics might still be a kick-out 3 in most instances.

Crush Mazzulla if you want for Boston’s struggles against Philadelphia after Joel Embiid returned — and we absolutely would have preferred to see him get more creative with lineups earlier than Game 7 — but the Celtics simply did not have the personnel to combat Embiid once he shook his initial rust.

Neemias Queta couldn’t stay out of foul trouble, while Vucevic and Luka Garza had known defensive deficiencies. The Celtics lost a ton of talent up front last summer and, even as Queta thrived in his first season as a starter, the depth deficiency came to roost on the big stage.

Mazzulla isn’t the first coach to run into some other familiar troubles with this core. Like Stevens and Ime Udoka before him, the Celtics have routinely struggled with prosperity, fumbling away big leads and being unable to put away opponents when they’re on the ropes.

Regardless of the reason, the coach is always the easy target when things go awry. That’s just part of the job. It’s a lot easier for most organizations to shuffle in a new coaching voice than make changes to the core of their lineup. Every coach in the NBA knows they have a finite shelf life.

Mazzulla loves embracing a challenge. He’s the one who phoned Derrick White on his birthday last summer, noted how he loved that everyone thought the Celtics would suck, then hung up. Mazzulla used the gap-year suggestion as motivation to prove the doubters wrong.

The skeptics remain after the Celtics’ early playoff exit. Even Banner 18 doesn’t buy you much of a grace period in these parts. This is another chance for Mazzulla to embrace the journey, embrace some changes, and reaffirm why he’s a championship coach.

The Houston Rockets’ offseason plans haven’t been made clear. The Rockets could go in a number of directions, as they’ve got glaring roster needs.

Last season’s team lacked playmaking guards, not to mention the Rockets’ lack of outside shooters. The Rockets lost the math game essentially every night. And they could use more shot makers (and shot takers) in general. 

From a roster standpoint, the team needs major upgrades. They can’t expect another season like this from Kevin Durant.

And they can’t expect Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams to make all the difference and fill all of the voids. They’ve even admitted that.

However, the messaging regarding what Houston intends to do this summer has been very inconsistent, especially if you’ve been keeping up with General Manager Rafael Stone’s media appearances since Houston’s early postseason exit.

During Houston’s end of season presser, Stone essentially stated that Houston would be running it back, save for marginal moves intended to shore up the tail end of the roster. 

“In terms of the roster, we’ll look at everything and look at all potential deals but we think that the players in our locker room can win alot of games and be very competitive. 

We have players coming back from injury that will help us. If we bring back largely the same group, continuity will help us.”

Stone and Ime Udoka sat side by side and emphasized the importance of internal growth from the Rockets’ younger players, across the board. Udoka’s quote is below.

“For us, I think improvement across the board with our young guys…not making any changes, that’s growth from those guys. Getting everybody back healthy, that’s part of it.”

Stone then joined the Ryen Russilo podcast and seemingly said something entirely different. 

“Hopefully, we get healthy and we’ll work really hard this summer at bolstering the roster. Maybe there’s things we can do that help us a little bit and come back next year and hopefully we’re a much better team.”

Perhaps this is all just a matter of conjuring. Maybe Stone doesn’t want to show his hand. 

Understandably. 

Once you make it known that you’re looking to move a player, they lose value, as an asset. Because teams know you’re ultimately wanting to rid yourself of said asset and they may not be as inclined to offer top value.

The messaging has certainly been inconsistent and a bit difficult to follow, regarding whether the Rockets intend to run it back or make an aggressive, franchise-defining move. They likely want to find another bargain, like last year’s deal for Kevin Durant. 

That seems unlikely. Especially on the star front.

Donovan Mitchell and/or Giannis Antetokounmpo — the stars on the market this summer — won’t come cheap. It’s been suggested that Houston could try to make a move at those players.

Regardless, Houston’s brass can’t afford to simply run it back and bank on internal improvement and/or development. They’re going to have to be active, if they hope to get on the same tier as the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs — who sit atop the Western Conference. 

An NBA season can end in many ways.

For about half of the league, the season ends without ever really beginning. Teams that finish in the lottery or lose in the Play-In Tournament never had much on the line.

Losing in the actual playoffs can vary. A hard-fought exit for a young team like the Toronto Raptors is still encouraging. A brutal 3-1 collapse from a title contender in Boston is harrowing, but they have enough championship DNA to feel good about running it back.

But then, there are the teams that get humbled. The ones who have to swallow some reality pills.

It’s hard to feel good about anything that comes on the wrong side of a sweep, and that only gets worse the deeper you go in the postseason.

For the Cleveland Cavaliers, I’m not sure a clearer message could have been sent in the Eastern Conference Finals: This team isn’t good enough.

Let’s start by adding context.

Getting this far is hard

Making it to the Eastern Conference Finals is an achievement. It’s not the ultimate goal, of course, but an accomplishment nonetheless. This was only the ninth time in 56 years that Cleveland made it to the final four. That means something.

It’s more impressive considering this team was put together on the fly. Darius Garland, De’Andre Hunter, and Lonzo Ball were all supposed to be key contributors to this team. All of which were shipped out in February, leaving the newcomers only a few weeks to acclimate themselves to Cleveland.

Teams that make a blockbuster move at the deadline rarely go deep into the playoffs. Inserting James Harden into the lineup and managing to go this far in the postseason is an anomaly. Again, that’s worth something.

But it still wasn’t good enough.

The Cavs hit the ground running in round one. They surged to a 2-0 series lead over the Raptors, riding the momentum of Donovan Mitchell and James Harden. The two-shot creators looked ready to rewrite the narratives around their playoff shortcomings and hit no hitches in their first two playoff games together.

That didn’t last.

Mitchell and Harden hit a wall in Toronto. They struggled to generate quality offense without turning it over or relying entirely on the outside shot. This would prove to be the theme throughout the rest of the playoffs, causing them to play seven games against a Raptors team that was missing multiple starters and then later failing to close out a reeling Pistons team.

“I tell you what didn’t help was losing those two Game 6’s,” said Kenny Atkinson. “I’ve been in this a long time, and you have to take advantage of those opportunities.”

Overcoming adversity and winning two Game 7s is encouraging. It’s a step forward for this squad. But it was also a sign that this team isn’t as close as they should be. Good teams don’t play with their food.

The Eastern Conference Finals confirmed that.

Shut Out by New York

The Cavs had to battle through two grueling seven-game series to get here. That begged the question, how much gas would they have left? The answer, after blowing a 22-point lead in Game 1, was none.

“We didn’t give ourselves a chance,” said Mitchell. “You can’t play with your food. We had an opportunity to close both [previous] series and give ourselves a rest.”

Cleveland jumped out to an early lead and then gradually played worse as the series went on. New York controlled every facet by the end, working harder, playing smarter, and providing solutions for anything the Cavs threw at them.

Conversely, the Cavs had nothing to fall back on. They aren’t an elite defense, falling outside of the top 10 this season for the first time since emerging as a playoff team. They also took a step backwards offensively, finishing the season 13th in three-point percentage after being a historically efficient squad last year.

That all rang true throughout the series as New York blew the doors off offensively while the Cavs failed to ever muster up a counter punch.

“I don’t think we even had a chance, not giving our best punch,” said Harden. “We didn’t even play a quarter of Cavs basketball.”

They were defeated through and through. I’m not sure holding on in Game 1 would have made a meaningful difference.

“Go through the other games, and look at the totality of it, and they pretty much dominated,” said Aktinson.

New York has won 11 straight playoff games. They’ve done it with the greatest offensive stretch of basketball in postseason history. That didn’t happen just because they shot the cover off the ball (they did), but because they properly adjusted to every moment of adversity and had an identity to fall back on.

Jalen Brunson and the Knicks don’t need three-pointers to beat you. They can get downhill, score from the mid-range, get to the free-throw line, or punish you with their passing. And while Brunson, for example, isn’t a great defender, the effort he puts into not being picked on was far greater than either Mitchell or Harden showed. That gives you a higher floor to work with.

That wasn’t true for Cleveland. The Cavs, who finished 13th in three-point percentage, launched over 150 three-pointers in this series and converted on fewer than 30% of them. That’s an indication that no one knows what this team is supposed to turn to when things get tough. They just kept firing away from deep, praying the results would change.

Again, how you end a season can tell you a lot.

The Cavs didn’t just get swept; they were run off their home floor in an elimination game. A night that was over almost as soon as the jump ball was thrown into the air. Championship-caliber teams don’t do that.

Season Conclusion

This type of exit means more than Cleveland’s previous losses. They weren’t injured. They didn’t underperform against a team that’s going nowhere. They measured themselves up against a legit contender and found out they don’t even come close to meeting the mark.

The writing was on the wall for most of the season. Cleveland wore their weaknesses on their sleeve and stayed committed to a process that no longer matched the personnel on the roster. They never came close to finding the joy, pace, or unselfish ball movement that defined their success a year ago. That finally led to their end versus New York.

The individual talent on this roster allowed the Cavs to overachieve in many ways. They made it farther than most. But the cohesion and willingness to adapt are what made the Knicks a significantly better basketball team. You can’t fake what they had — and the Cavs clearly didn’t have it.

Perhaps this is another stepping stone towards the end goal. That’s what the Cavs are hoping, anyway. Harden and Mitchell both ended their media availability by re-committing to the franchise and each other.

“I’m sorry for the city of Cleveland, for it to be like this in a sweep,” said Mitchell. “We have unfinished business. The city deserves a ring.”

It will take a whole lot of work to back that up.