Seventeen wins in their first 20 games of the season surely had the Cleveland Cavaliers feeling good about hosting the defending champion Boston Celtics on Sunday night.
Although Boston was coming to town riding a seven-game winning streak, it was without two of its top players in Jaylen Brown (illness) and Derrick White (foot) and had just gone through a 138-129 slugfest against the Bulls in Chicago two nights earlier.
Cleveland had the perfect opportunity to get some revenge against the Celtics, and it didn’t let it slip.
The Cavaliers tagged Boston with its first loss since Nov. 12, pulling off a 115-111 victory after facing a 12-point deficit with 8:09 remaining in the fourth quarter.
And Cleveland fans should savor every bit of this win, because the Cavaliers simply aren’t on the Celtics’ level—no matter what the scoreboard said on Sunday.
When these two teams met two weeks ago, it was Cleveland that was short-handed, as Isaac Okoro, Caris LeVert and Dean Wade were all missing from a 120-117 loss that ended the Cavaliers’ season-opening, 15-game winning streak.
Cleveland was also held down by Darius Garland, who went 3-for-21 from the field in the Nov. 19 meeting.
We have yet to see Boston and the Cavaliers go at each other at full strength, but what we can tell you is that Brown and White move the needle far more than Okoro, LeVert and Wade do. The Celtics were dealing with much more adversity during their loss on Sunday than Cleveland had to put up with during its setback in mid-November.
It also took a superhuman performance from Donovan Mitchell to get the Cavaliers to level the season series with Boston at 1-1. Mitchell erupted for 20 points on 6-of-6 shooting from the field and 4-of-4 shooting from 3-point range in the fourth quarter. He quite literally needed to be perfect to make sure Cleveland got the win.
Impressive? Yes. But such a performance only won the Cavaliers the battle, not the war.
While important, Sunday’s game won’t be on anyone’s mind if Cleveland were to collide with the Celtics at any point during the playoffs, especially if that get-together happens in the Eastern Conference finals. At that point, it’s a seven-game series. And if both teams are fully healthy, Boston isn’t letting the Cavaliers get to four wins before it does.
Cleveland is a regular-season team until it can prove otherwise. The Cavaliers have two playoff berths over the previous six seasons, getting bounced in the first round of the postseason in 2023 before falling in the Eastern Conference semifinals—at the hands of the Celtics—this past spring.
Over those same six seasons, Boston has made two trips to the Finals, two additional trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, and another to the semis. It suffered a first-round exit in 2021.
This Celtics team is special. Don’t let one loss make you forget that Boston is drilling 19.1 threes a night, has five scorers averaging at least 16.0 points per contest and hasn’t dropped three games in a row since the 2023 playoffs.
So celebrate now, Cleveland. There won’t be any reason to in six months.
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