Cavs is missing the possibility of conquering East; Donovan Mitchell undergoes a fright injury

Cleveland – What emerged on Sunday evening was a shame for the knights, and that’s it. The silver coating of all this is how much the worst things could have been.

Cleveland has detonated his first possibility of conquering seed n. 1 For the Eastern Conference playoffs losing at home with the Kings 120-113 sacrament in a game of disconcerting defensive accidents, scarce shots at 3 points and a surprisingly poor one for a key rotation player.

But the procedure, however disappointing, did not kill the Cavs. Out of four games on the Boston Celtics with four to play, Cleveland has four more chances of closing this.

If Donovan Mitchell’s ankle shot at the beginning of the third quarter had gone differently, we would have talked about a potential disaster.

As it was, Mitchell was limping into the changing rooms and could lose Tuesday’s game against Chicago. With the 9:54 am left in the third, Mitchell was dragging a comedy when he approached the back of the foot of the guard of sacrament Keon Ellis. Mitchell’s left ankle bent and almost hit the floor, and Mitchell, obviously limp, fell on the pitch on the sidelines in front of the team’s bench.

He was twisted with pain and grabbing the back of the ankle, but after a minute or two, Mitchell got up from the field and arrived in the changing rooms under his own power. He returned with 3:01 on the left in the period and played the entire fourth quarter, ending the game with 19 points, six rebounds and six assists.

“I wanted to get seed n. 1 and then go from there,” Mitchell said when he was asked why he returned to the game, given the positioning of the relatively sure playoffs of Cleveland and his main objective often declared to be healthy for the playoffs.

“If I’m able to go, I go,” Mitchell said. “Obviously, a little sorchy after the first adrenaline race … but I’m trying to win, trying to help my team win in every possible way.”

Cavs Kenny Atkinson’s coach admitted that his mind was unleashing when Mitchell went down. Something for the effect of “fantastic, this is exactly what we don’t need now”. Atkinson said he said to Mitchell: “” If it is also the 5 percent in which you are a little weak or bother you, you just have to tell me. We have to get out of you, we have more games to try to close this, but we must not do it tonight. “He said he was fine, he felt well.

“I look at him like a positive,” Atkinson continued. “Imagine that his ankle is bad, he is out for a couple of weeks, which could easily happen. So I’m looking at him like a positive man, he is back, he finished playing the entire fourth quarter, so it could be the most positive thing about the night.”

The other good news was the return and the next game, of one of the super subtitles of Cleveland for the season, Ty Jerome. Having lost the last five games with a painful left knee, Jerome returned against the kings and led the Cavs with 20 points in 23 minutes from the bench, of which 10 in the fourth quarter during which Cleveland went back from a 12 -point deficit to briefly resume the command.

Jerome finished 9 out of 13 from the field and was on the pitch for almost the first six minutes of the last quarter. He was cooking and so were the Cavs, but Atkinson chose to remove Jerome so as not to push him at the end of the regular season, with the playoffs so close.

“I just didn’t want to risk,” Atkinson said.

Jerome said he was out to “let (his knee) calm down a little, let the swelling drop.” He said he knew he would return before the end of the regular season and perhaps he could have played last week in a home victory over the Knicks. Jerome has an average of over 12 points, three rebounds and a theft in about 20 minutes per game outside the bench, which has it in the running for prizes such as the sixth man of the NBA and the most improved player.

Your sixth man of the year, fans of Cavs. 😤@tyjome_ | #Letemknow https://t.co/qwtf2hlejn pic.twitter.com/fxbzvimsa3

– Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) April 7, 2025

The other Cleveland candidate for the sixth man of the year, De’andre Hunter, had a bad number hanging on him in one of those statistics in which no one is quite sure of what he says about the player’s performance, because there are factors outside his control. But, it is triggered, let’s face it: in the 22 minutes of Hunter’s court on Sunday, the kings exceeded the Cavs of 28.

11 points of Hunter, three 3S, two blocks and two thefts suggested not having tried to play with an arm tied behind his back or a bandage that covered his eyes – so let’s move on to some sore points that are easier to understand.

Cleveland has allowed 37 points of defeats, which suggests a lazy transition defense (at best), not to say anything to be sloppy with the ball. The three best Kings players are Domantas Sabonis, DeMar Derozan and Zach Lavine, and the three combined for 92 points, 10 3 and 15 assists. They were equally dominant and yes, they are also prepared, but their shared properties of Sunday game suggests a certain lack of attention paid to Cleveland’s gaming plan – unless the game plan itself was the problem, but Jerome said that the players did not follow through this caused the problem.

Darius Garland shot 4 out of 13 and 1 out of 7 out of 3S. He had some irregular game from his all-star appearance in San Francisco in February. Cleveland was 10 out of 38 from 3 as a team and it is no longer the best 3-point shooting team of the Lega-Un sign that the entire group is regressed a bit from his Halcyon days from late October to mid-March (Cleveland is 6-6 from March 16).

Add everything and have a fairly substantial breath on the possibility of jumping the east (essay of the regular season) only for the fourth time in the history of the franchise and the first without Lebron James on the roster. In addition, after five months of strips of historical victories and dazzling games, the Cavs are now out of the race to also tie the franchise record for the victories – a little difficult to believe, given how dominant they have been so long this year.

“I didn’t think our energy level was as high as I thought it would be, considering that the first seed was at stake,” Atkinson said. “Their level of energy and intensity was higher. I think we collected it a little, but I was a little surprised that we were no longer punctual.”

Yes, the kings technically have more to play right now than the Cavs and cannot afford to lose. They maintained an advantage of two games on the Suns around playing on Sunday for the tenth seed in the West: the kings need to end at least the tenth to make the play-in tournament for the right to continue their season for at least another game.

There was another negative part of Sunday’s game and this mistake belonged to the officers. Lavine clearly scored a layup after the shooting clock came out with 46 seconds left and the kings ahead of three. The officials allowed the basket and did not examine the game.

“We made a mistake,” said the protagonist of Courtney Kirkland after the game. “During the live action, we thought Lavine released the ball before the expiry of the clock.

Atkinson, who had not heard that explanation of Kirkland, said: “We make errors, we make mistakes, they (the officials) make mistakes. They are not perfect, so they won’t do much. This is not why we lost the game.”

(Photo: Ken Blaze / Imagn images)