Donovan Mitchell’s growing legend in Cleveland, more ahead of Cavs-Pacers Game 4

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INDIANAPOLIS – Writing to you from a First Watch on Illinois Street here on a gorgeous, and I mean gorgeous Saturday morning.

Yes, I know, it’s a chain restaurant and I could just as easily eat at the two First Watch joints in Western Cuyahoga County at home, but this location is a favorite (great coffee, creative menu with things like an Italian sausage, quinoa and kale bowl, and they do the blocking and tackling – pancakes and bacon – just right), Cavs fans have read more stories of mine that were written here than they could possibly know, and the lounge at the hotel was crawling with people on this college graduation weekend in central Indiana.

So, here are 26 thoughts for the Cavs’ largest lead (26 points) from Game 3 against the Pacers, beyond the heralded return of Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and De’Andre Hunter from injury.

1. There are Myles Garrett, Jose Ramirez and Donovan Mitchell. These are Cleveland-based superstar athletes who have, leaving the ins and outs of each individual situation to the side for a moment, committed themselves to the city and their teams through long-term contracts, first and foremost, and secondly are trying to follow in LeBron James’ footsteps. You all know just what I mean.

2. At present, they’re all pretty far from the goal, for different reasons. In Garrett’s case, the Browns were a disaster last season and appear to be a mess at quarterback. In Ramirez’s case, the Guardians got pretty close last season but fell in the American League Championship Series, and now it’s only May in a very, very long baseball season. And Mitchell, well, his Cavs still trail the Pacers, 2-1, in this Eastern Conference semifinal series. Cleveland is favored in Las Vegas to come back and win the series, but history suggests the odds shouldn’t be in the Cavs’ corner to do so. We’ll see soon enough.

3. I apologize for all the throat clearing here, I’ll get to the point. Mitchell is having a series worthy of being compared to LeBron.

4. In Game 3, Mitchell not only scored 43 points with nine rebounds and five assists, but he controlled the tempo of the game the way we used to see James do in Cleveland, Kawhi Leonard do in Toronto and Nikola Jokić in Denver. After the 48 points he scored in Game 2, Mitchell is the first player this postseason, and just the second Cavalier ever, to score 40 points in consecutive playoff games. Can you guess who the other Cleveland player to do that was, and when he did it? What happened in that postseason? I bet you can.

5. “I thought he was masterful, and I don’t use that word hardly ever,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said of Mitchell after Game 3. “He was masterful. In the way he controlled the game and not just passing, making the right decisions, defending, probably for me, the best performance of the year.”

6. For the second time in the playoffs, a Cavs’ lead was dwindling and Mitchell stepped forward in the fourth quarter to stop the bleeding. You could argue the Pacers cutting their deficit to 11 with 8:26 left was no big deal, and if you did, I would give you a noogie. The Pacers already staged a massive comeback and finished it in Game 2, and came from 23 down in the fourth quarter (and 27 overall) to beat Cleveland in overtime on the final day of the regular season (yes, it was a game of mostly third-stringers, but that day nevertheless remains on the minds of players on both sides), and the Knicks have twice pulled off 20-point comebacks in their series with Boston. At any rate, the energy in Indiana’s arena – like Miami’s, and Cleveland’s the building’s name has changed too much for me to keep up – was beginning to build and for the Cavs the air was getting thin. Out of a timeout, Mitchell hit a jumper, and then a 3, and then found Strus for another 3. He scored 14 in the final frame. The performance was similar to Mitchell’s Game 2 effort against the Heat, when it felt like Miami was poised to steal a game.

7. “It was just a response,” Mitchell said. “(I) understand that it’s hard to blow a team out by 20 in their place. … Understand who they are, they’re not gonna fold. And when they went on their run, accept it, understand it, and like I always tell you, how do you respond? Understand that it’s not the end of the world.”

8. In the first quarter, Mitchell soared into the air, cocked the ball back in his right hand, and looked like he was going to try an absurd, borderline dangerous tomahawk over the Pacers’ Myles Turner. There wasn’t any earthly way Mitchell was going to be able to finish the dunk – he looked like he’d jumped too early and there was too much traffic in front of him. So just as Turner bumped him the air, Mitchell pulled the ball down, still in flight, and somehow scooped it through two defenders for a layup and free throw. The play was compared to Michael Jordan’s layup in the 1991 NBA Finals, except Mitchell had way more human mass to have to navigate to finish.

How did Donovan Mitchell finish this layup?! 😳🪣 pic.twitter.com/uMuLG4hJiB

— Courtside Buzz (@CourtsideBuzzX) May 10, 2025

9. Keep in mind, Mitchell already has the dunk of this series, if not the entire playoffs, when he detonated on Pascal Siakam in Game 2.

DUNK OF THE POSTSEASON‼️

MY GOODNESS DONOVAN MITCHELL 😳 pic.twitter.com/PZjG0GotBc

— Culture Hardwood (@Culturehwood) May 7, 2025

And also keep in mind Mitchell is playing on a strained calf. This is the stuff of Cleveland legend, if he, and the Cavs, can survive this series and advance.

10. When you cover LeBron as a beat, you are trained to listen for buzzwords that either: A.) Have double or perhaps hidden meaning; B.) Will touch a nerve in the league or with the fan base; C.) There are a bunch of other reasons, but let’s stop here because when Atkinson called Strus the Cavs’ “enforcer,” it flexed my old muscle of perking up over a single word.

11. Fans LOVE an enforcer – the goon at the end of the bench who is put into the game to inflict physical punishment, retribution or fear upon an opponent. The Cavs also are routinely questioned among national media members because they don’t seem to have any of those guys, and to a larger extent, are sometimes considered soft (during the Heat series, I wrote that these Cavs shouldn’t be called that word anymore, but whatever).

12. Strus is neither a goon nor seated at the end of Cleveland’s bench. He isn’t on the court to shove an opponent over another Cavalier crouched on all fours behind that player, either. That’s not what Atkinson meant.

13. Strus, 29, is the ultimate adult in Cleveland’s locker room. He is a no-nonsense, accountable, “do what the situation demands” player who learned his craft playing in huge games with the Miami Heat a few years ago. He is the Cavs’ “enforcer” insofar as he is demanding the best out of his teammates and holding them responsible if they are not paying attention to detail. The “enforcer” in basketball, the way you typically think of it, is an incredibly overrated role. What Strus is to the Cavs, however, is vital.

14. “Every game is going to ask for something different … but I’ve had experiences, I’ve played in some big games, so I’m kind of just understanding the moment and keeping guys locked in,” said Strus, who has twice played in Game 7 of an Eastern Conference finals, and also competed in the 2023 NBA Finals. “I (am) trying to do anything to win.”

15. In the first playoff series, Strus guarded Miami’s leading scorer and his former teammate, Tyler Herro – who struggled mightily. In this series, Strus is guarding Tyrese Haliburton, who until Game 3 was having a whale of a series. But with a fully available roster, and with adjustments made by the Cavs coaching staff, Strus was able to play Haliburton differently, denying the ball from him as much as possible instead of giving Haliburton room to catch the ball, run the offense and find his spots. Strus was even denying Haliburton during jump balls. The result was Haliburton scoring just four points and attempting eight shots. Again, this is the kind of “enforcer” the Cavs need.

16. “We’ve got to limit his touches – he’s a head of the snake, and it’s extreme,” Atkinson said of the Cavs’ approach to Haliburton.

17. Of Strus, Atkinson said “he’s becoming our forceful leader.”

18. “He’s really kind of taking a hold, taking a hold of huddles, film sessions,” Atkinson said. “His spirit’s phenomenal. And he’s on guys, like if they missed an assignment. He’s kind of our enforcer.”

19. The other defensive adjustment the Cavs made for Game 3 was to institute a 3-2 zone, with Mobley at the top of the key. The Cavaliers don’t normally use that formation when they play a zone defense, but Atkinson said they need three perimeter defenders in a zone because Indiana often plays five men who can shoot 3s. The Pacers shot 42 percent from the field – at home!! – and looked completely confused as to how to respond to Cleveland’s formation. As the Pacers sift through all that went wrong in Game 3, their primary adjustment will be to find something that answers the Cavs’ zone.

20. Cleveland still has its own problems to solve, too, beyond simply trailing in this series, with three key players who are less than 100 percent. The Cavs have to either get more from Ty Jerome, or swallow hard and go away from him for the remainder of the series.

21. It doesn’t sound like Atkinson is ready to try option B, though in Game 3 Atkinson used Sam Merrill in some of the spots where Jerome’s number would typically be called. Jerome followed his 1-of-14 shooting performance in Game 2 by going 1-of-8 in Game 3. The Pacers are among the fastest teams in the NBA, and their guards are exceptionally quick. Jerome is a big guard at 6-5 and has shown poise and grace as a scorer in the mid-range and on the 3-point line. He is not fast, but his relative lack of speed did not hurt him during the regular season. It has been exposed in this series, in part because he is not doing what he normally does well on offense. His liability has become more pronounced.

22. “He’s struggling, but this is the playoffs – you go through these stretches,” Atkinson said. “I love Ty. I know what he can bring. We need him. We need him in this series, especially with (Garland) hobbled. … He’ll get it back because he’s got extreme mental toughness. He’s gonna go down swinging if he’s going down. So that’s … we’re going to keep rolling with him.”

23. Jerome was a runner-up for NBA Sixth Man of the Year and if not for a few missed free throws would have been a 50-40-90 shooter on the season. One school of thought is his supreme self confidence and skill will allow him to resurface, either in this series or the next. But, there is something else to monitor. Counting the regular season and playoffs, Jerome has logged 1,554 minutes – essentially double the amount he had played in any of his first five seasons. This isn’t to say he’s too worn down physically to be effective for the remainder of the postseason, but it is something to consider when wondering how such an effective scorer has made two of his last 22 shots (he was also 8 of 20 in Game 1 of this series.).

24. Have you had enough? I’m about there. My breakfast was finished an hour ago. The coffee has gone cold. Two more quick ones.

25. Atkinson, you may recall, went in on the referees after Game 1 for not calling fouls on the plays that led to injuries for Hunter and Mobley. Being so openly critical of NBA officials – Atkinson said plainly that calls were missed and there should be consequences for such plays – almost uniformly earns a fine from the league. But not this time. I don’t have an official response from the league for you, but someone who would know told me, “We’ve gotten soft.” Ha!

26. I hope you enjoyed the thoughts format. If you’re new, these pre-date the Cavs’ glory days from last decade, when my friend and colleague Jason Lloyd was covering this team for the Akron Beacon Journal. His style has been copied many times since, but no one was better at it than him, which I’m reminded of every time I try such a column. The longer the Cavs’ playoff run goes, the more likely he and I will reunite on the road, getting some of the ol’ band back together again from the last time Cleveland had a basketball player scoring 40 points in consecutive playoff games.

Did you guess who?

(Photo of Donovan Mitchell: Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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