Donovan Mitchell in right state of mind playing against Knicks
Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell gestures before the start of an NBA basketball game against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Donovan Mitchell wasn’t going to let it happen again.
He wasn’t about to have another nightmare performance in the arena he dreamed of playing nightly in when he was growing up in nearby Elmsford. Instead, the Cleveland guard came up big when his struggling team needed him most, scoring 30 points and hitting two big shots down the stretch Wednesday night to lift the Cavaliers to a 95-89 win over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
“We didn’t win here last season,” forward Caris LeVert said. “This one felt good for sure.”
It certainly felt good for Mitchell, who had to be anxious to put his last game here behind him. In one of the most important games of his career – Game 4 of the Knicks-Cavaliers playoff series last year -- Mitchell scored just 11 points and turned the ball over six times. As a result, his team fell into a 3-1 hole in the series that they ended up losing, 4-1.
Mitchell was quick to try to put that ugliness behind him Wednesday as he scored his team’s first 13 points. Mitchell had 23 points in the first half, but was held scoreless in the second until hitting a three-pointer at the top of the key with 2:36 remaining. He then followed it 30 seconds later a putback of his missed three-pointer to give the Cavaliers an 84-77 lead.
It was Mitchell’s first win at Madison Square Garden wearing a Cleveland uniform. While he initially tried to downplay the importance of that, he did admit it felt good to bounce back from his performance in last year’s pivotal playoff game.
“Personally, I’ve played here and won here before,” said Donovan, who spent the first five years of his career in Utah. “You play a playoff opponent and lose, there’s always that type of hunger. You’re always going to have that. For me, I kind of got to a point that I heard about [that game] for so long, it’s kind of like all right, there’s bigger things on our agenda.
“But Caris is right. It’s definitely something that had been dangled over our head.”
Mitchell had a heavy load to carry, considering that Jarrett Allen and Darius Garland were both out with hamstring injuries. The game was the second of a back-to-back, and the Knicks and the Knicks had blown out the Cavaliers in Cleveland, 109-91, Tuesday night.
The Knicks were missing RJ Barrett Wednesday, so the contest was not a fair measure of either team. Yet, that didn’t matter to Mitchell. He was clearly ready to exorcise the Garden’s playoff ghosts and return to the player who had averaged 24.7 points at the Garden before last year’s playoffs.
“You always have that game circled,” Mitchell said before Wednesday’s game. “….. as much as we continue to harp on what happened last season. But neither of us won the championship so we have to continue to find a way to win enough games to get to the playoffs, win in the playoffs and get to a championship. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Mitchell’s ultimate goal once was to play for the Knicks. It looked like that might happen as he was nearly traded from Utah to the Knicks a year ago. Watching him knock down three after three early Wednesday, Knicks fans might have been wondering just how far their team could go with Mitchell and Jalen Brunson in the same backcourt.
It seems, for now, Knicks fans are going to have to settle for seeing the two guards go head-to-head as there is a budding rivalry between the two defensive-minded teams. You can bet that the Cavaliers are looking to make up for last year’s early exit.
Said Mitchell: “[This year] we got bigger things on our agenda.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
