Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell scored a season-low seven points on 2-for-18 shooting in a 123-112 loss against the Phoenix Suns on Friday. After the loss, the All-Star guard blamed himself.
“Put this on me,” Mitchell told reporters. “When your leader ain’t doing shit, this is what happens. Yeah, we have to guard better, rebound, shit like that. But if I’m not being who I need to be, then we’re not going to get to where we want to get to.”
The Cavs are first in the East and 56-14 on the season, and, until recently, appeared to be cruising toward the end of the regular season. A week before the loss in Phoenix, they extended their winning streak to a franchise-record 16 games. They’ve now dropped four in a row, though, and Mitchell has been uncharacteristically inefficient lately.
“It’s been like this for the past four games, and we’ve lost four straight,” Mitchell said. “I have to be better, simple as that. You can point to all these different things, yeah: KD having 30-whatever, we gave him some — f— all that, it’s on me. I have to be better for the group. I’ve been good for the group all year, and this is on me.”
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Mitchell missed the last two games of Cleveland’s winning streak due to left groin soreness, and the Cavs have lost all four games since he returned. He dismissed a question about his health on Friday, saying, “I’m fine.” His shooting slump predates his two-game absence; in Mitchell’s last six games, he has scored an average of 18.8 points on 29.6% shooting and shot 7 for 50 (14%) from 3-point range.
“I don’t think it’s all on him,” Cleveland’s Evan Mobley told reporters after the loss against the Suns. “I feel like we all started slow. We weren’t getting rebounds, we weren’t necessarily getting stops. Some shots weren’t falling for him and some other people as well, but we can’t just put everything on him. We gotta start out better an come out with more energy. Even if our shots aren’t falling, we can always do the intangibles.”
Cavs’ guard Ty Jerome said the team needs to play with more “force.”
“I don’t think we’re playing with the same energy and effort, and it’s easy to let it slip one game, then two games it slips, then you look up and you lose four straight,” Jerome told reporters after falling to the sub-.500 Suns. “I mean, these teams are good. They got Kevin Durant and Devin Booker over there and a lot of other guys, too, so these teams are good. We can’t just sleepwalk through these games. It’s a good lesson for us.”
Mitchell said that he’d rather go through this now than in the playoffs, and it will build character. “I’m not going to run from the criticism,” he said. “This is the role I have. This is my job.” He added that he will “keep plugging” until he finds his form again.
“I’m a sicko for this shit, man,” Mitchell said. “This tests what you really are mentally, just continuing to push. And I have no doubt, I haven’t lost confidence in my abilities, it’s going to come, it’s going to happen. But until I continue to be who I’ve been, this is what happens.”
The truth is that Mitchell’s struggles aren’t the primary reason for Cleveland’s slide. The Cavs’ offense was terrible in the first of the four losses, but the bigger problem is that they surrendered 137.5 points per 100 possessions against the Los Angeles Clippers, 126.8 per 100 against the Sacramento Kings and 128.1 per 100 against Phoenix. (For reference, Cleveland, the No. 1 offense in the league, has scored 121.5 per 100 this season.) It has been beaten up on the boards in the past few games, too.
Mitchell is right, though, that the Cavs count on him to be better than this. He’s having an All-NBA season, and the past week has been his only real rough stretch.
“There’s really nowhere else to look, to be honest with you,” Mitchell said. “So I’ll be better. I’ll figure it the f— out for everybody.”
