The Cleveland Cavaliers have won a league-high 49 games so far this season, and none of them have said more about how serious we ought to be taking this team that the one they pulled off against the Celtics on Friday.
Boston led this game 25-3 before the first four minutes had even ticked off. Even in a league where big, even huge, comebacks are relatively normal, that kind of immediate ambush should’ve buried the Cavs. Instead, thanks to 61 combined points from Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland and a clutch fourth quarter from Evan Mobley, Cleveland rallied for a 123-116 victory — their ninth straight — which should all but lock up the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
With 23 games to play, Cleveland now holds an eight-game lead over Boston with the tiebreaker currently in hand, making the lead an effective nine games. Boston is not mathematically out of the race for No. 1, but it ain’t happening. Cleveland is going to be the East’s top seed, and this is the kind of win that could prove psychologically huge if these teams indeed meet up in the conference finals.
After all, even as Cleveland has run through this regular season, Boston is still the favorite to win it all at +200, followed closely by the Thunder at +210. The Cavs are third at +650, which means the masses are not betting, literally and figuratively, on them as a top-line contender.
Perhaps the Celtics aren’t taking the Cavs that seriously, either. After Jayson Tatum buried a corner 3 to stretch Boston’s lead to the aforementioned 25-3, he had a little message for the Cavs.
I’m no expert lip reader, but that’s a pretty clear “get the *bleep* out of here” from Tatum, and one would be safe to deduce that his message ran deeper than this particular game. He was telling the Cavs that the fun is over, that they’ve had their little regular-season run but now that the serious stuff is starting, they do not belong — not in Boston’s arena, not in Boston’s class, and certainly not in the top-tier title conversation.
Tatum had a tremendous game, becoming the first player in the NBA’s play-by-play era to record 30 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in the first half. He finished with 46 points, 16 rebounds and nine assists, but his celebration was clearly premature.
Cleveland outscored Boston by 29 points from that moment forward.
Sure, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis didn’t play. Holiday’s absence left Sam Hauser to get repeatedly targeted by Cleveland scorers. But Tatum, Derrick White and Jaylen Brown scored 99 combined points. A 22-point lead with your two best players going for 46 (Tatum) and 37 (Brown), at home, while shooting 43% from 3 as a team, is a winning formula 99% of the time.
Cleveland simply didn’t die, and that, more than anything else to come out of this game, is the takeaway. The Cavs don’t give a damn about what Vegas or Tatum or anyone else thinks. They know they’re for real, and if the Celtics didn’t before Friday night, they do now.
