Cavs Notes: Game 1 Loss, Harden, Atkinson, Mitchell

After coming back from a 22-point deficit to defeat the Cavaliers in overtime in Game 1, the Knicks weren’t shy about discussing their late-game offensive strategy, as Vincent Goodwill of ESPN writes.

“It was no secret,” head coach Mike Brown told reporters. “We were attacking (James) Harden.”

As Zach Kram of ESPN details, the Knicks player who was being defended by Harden set a screen an incredible 16 times in the fourth quarter, with the team using the strategy at one point to ensure Harden was defending Jalen Brunson on 10 consecutive possessions. After going scoreless on the first two of those possessions, the Knicks scored 18 points on the next eight, including 13 from Brunson alone, Kram writes.

Still, according to Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic, head coach Kenny Atkinson said during his post-game media session on Tuesday that he never considered removing Harden from the game as the Cavaliers’ lead slipped away: “He’s been one of our best defenders in these playoffs. I trust him. Smart. Great hands. I didn’t think about that.”

Atkinson doubled down on those comments on Wednesday, placing the blame for the collapse on the Cavaliers’ team defense as a whole rather than on Harden specifically.

“One thing about James: I’ll just defend him,” the Cavs’ coach said, per Zach Braziller of The New York Post. “He’s a good isolation defender, always has been. He’s super smart. I said it [Tuesday] night, he has great hands.

“… Without you, we’re knocked out in the first round,” Atkinson said of his message to Harden. “We’re in a great position, you’ve played great. Sometimes micro experiences get exaggerated. Keep being yourself.”

Here’s more on the Cavs ahead of Game 2:

• Atkinson only used one timeout as the Knicks made their fourth-quarter comeback and still had two left when the fourth quarter concluded, notes Jamal Collier of ESPN. He defended that decision after the game and cited bad luck when he discussed the Cavs’ blown lead. “They hit some really tough shots in that fourth quarter,” Atkinson said. “We got a little unlucky, quite honestly. My only regret, and this can happen when you get a little fatigued, I think it just stopped moving. We were pinging the ball all over the place, great ball movement, and then it just got a little stagnant.”
• Atkinson should have more than just one regret about the way Game 1 played out, according to Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com (subscription required), who argues that the head coach was one of the “primary culprits” of the improbable late-game collapse. In Fedor’s view, Atkinson should have taken a “clearly exhausted” Harden off the floor or at least adjusted his defensive scheme to stop letting the Knicks switch so easily onto him.
• While Atkinson spoke about getting “unlucky,” Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell offered a harsher assessment of his team’s performance down the stretch, according to Jenna Lemoncelli of The New York Post. “We f–king blew it,” Mitchell said during his post-game media session. “… That can’t happen. But it did. We play in two days. We can’t sit here and let it kill our momentum, kill what we’ve been doing. It’s not a good loss.”
• As discouraging as the Game 1 loss was, Atkinson believes that his team – which has won a pair of elimination games and came back from a 2-0 deficit in the second round against Detroit – has what it takes to bounce back and put it behind them, Braziller writes for The New York Post. “You live between misery and awesomeness in the playoffs, and this is of course misery,” Atkinson said. “But this is probably the fourth miserable game we’ve had in the playoffs. It’s like, ‘OK, get back on the horse.'”