Knicks keeping Donovan Mitchell, their offseason crush, at bay
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson dribbles against Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell in the second quarter during Game 4 of the Eastern Conference First Round Playoffs at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
It looks like Donovan Mitchell might help the Knicks get to the second round of the playoffs after all.
The native New Yorker was supposed to be the superstar who would lift the Knicks’ franchise out of mediocrity this season while playing alongside Jalen Brunson. At least that was the Knicks’ original plan until Cleveland swooped in this summer with a better offer for Utah and landed the four-time NBA All-Star.
But as the Knicks took a 3-1 lead over Cleveland on Sunday with a 102-93 win in Game 4 of their first-round series, it’s become apparent that whiffing on Mitchell in the offseason didn’t exactly wreck the Knicks.
Mitchell had a nightmare game Sunday against the team he once dreamed of playing for, scoring 11 points and shooting 5-for-18. Mitchell went 0-for-4 from three-point range, turned the ball over six times and had just five assists. Most costly, in the second half of a game that the Cavaliers had a chance to win, he was 1-for-9 and scored two points.
Brunson, who would have been the second option if he was playing alongside Mitchell, was once again the best player on the floor, scoring 29 points and shooting 5-for-9 from three.
It was not the first time he has outplayed Mitchell in the playoffs; he also did it last year when Brunson was in Dallas and Mitchell in Utah. Brunson helped push the Mavericks to a first-round win in that series when he scored 41 points in Game 2.
After scoring 38 points in Game 1 of this series, Mitchell has scored 17, 22 and 11 points. He took ownership for his poor play after Sunday’s game.
“I played like [expletive],” Mitchell said. “I’m the leader of this group. Everybody did their job, and I didn’t. It’s as simple as that, and we’ll fix it.”
He will have to fix it quickly as Game 5 is Wednesday in Cleveland. Should the Knicks win, it would mark the first time they have advanced beyond the first round since they beat the Celtics in 2013.
Josh Hart, who started in place of the injured Quentin Grimes (shoulder), deserves the major credit for forcing Mitchell into one of the worst postseason games of his career.
“It’s a full team effort,” Hart said of the defense on Mitchell. “The biggest thing with us is we want to make it tough for him, we want to make him see bodies, close driving lanes and force him into taking tough twos and step-back threes, and stuff like that. We know he’s capable of making those shots. He’s shown in his six years in the league he can make big shots, he can make tough shots, but that’s what we have to do.
“Teammates had my back. When he blew by me, they were able to challenge him at the rim and just make it difficult for him. You know he’s not always going to shoot 5-for-18. We just have to make sure we’re ready in Game 5 for an aggressive Donovan.”
It was a surprisingly poor performance for the man who carried the Cavaliers to their best season of the post-LeBron James era. Mitchell averaged a career-high 28.3 points in the regular season. Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters after the game that he thought Mitchell got some good looks but they just weren’t falling. The truth was that Mitchell looked uncomfortable for most of the game.
“At the end of the day, you have to put the ball in the basket,” Bickerstaff said. “We have to do a better job creating opportunities for each other and when we get opportunities, we have to take advantage of them.”
The Knicks now have to take advantage of the fact that they have a fearless floor leader in Brunson who has led them to the precipice of doing something special. The Knicks have not won a playoff series in five games or fewer since 2000 when they swept the Raptors in the first round of what was then a best-of-five series.
Brunson, for one, is not looking ahead.
“It’s not over. Not even close to being over,” he said. “We have to continue to keep focusing on one day at a time. There’s nothing to celebrate, there’s nothing to be truly happy about.”
Not yet.
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.
