Cavs Notes: Mitchell, Thompson, Game 7, Harden

Donovan Mitchell failed to carry the Cavaliers into the conference finals in Game 6 against Detroit on Friday. Mitchell scored a series-low 18 points on 6-of-20 shooting and had as many turnovers (three) as assists in the 21-point loss.

“I can’t dwell on it,” Mitchell said. “I missed shots tonight. … I’ve been making them most every game of this series, and tonight I didn’t.”

Mitchell must get past this clunker and deliver in Game 7 at Detroit on Sunday, Jason Lloyd of The Athletic opines. The outcome of Game 7 will have major implications for Mitchell and the franchise.

Lloyd speculates that Mitchell might be hiding an injury, noting that he hasn’t looked like himself for most of this postseason.

Here’s more on the Cavaliers:

• A controversial ruling allowed the Pistons’ defensive ace, Ausar Thompson, to stay in the game. While fighting through a screen during the second quarter, Thompson threw Sam Merrill to the court with his arm around Merrill’s neck. However, the officials assessed Thompson with a Flagrant 1 foul, rather than ejecting him. Lead official Zach Zarba explained the decision. “The criteria for a flagrant foul 2 would be windup, impact and follow-through,” Zarba said, per The Athletic’s Joe Vardon. “On this particular play, there was impact and follow-through, but there was no windup. It was unnecessary contact but also not excessive, so that’s why it wasn’t upgraded to a Flagrant 2.”
• James Harden said the Cavs need to match Detroit’s defensive intensity to win Game 7, per Cleveland.com. “Not shooting the basketball well, I wouldn’t say it’s an excuse, but it’s not a reason. Our defense has to be the priority from the beginning of the game until the last buzzer,” he said. “That’s priority number one. And I don’t think we necessarily did that from the beginning of the game until the final buzzer, which is the reason why we didn’t play well. We feed off our defense, our energy comes from our defense, and we didn’t do that well enough like they did. So then our offense is a little bit more difficult just because you’re not getting stops. So we got to take the ball out, and it’s just a trickle effect. So in order to win this game, we gotta hang our hats on the defensive end, and we should be in a good position.”
• At least for this postseason, Harden has passed Stephen Curry on the all-time points list, Daniel Oyefusi of ESPN notes. He moved into 10th place during the first quarter on a step-back 3-pointer from the right wing. That gave him 4,148 postseason points. Curry has scored 4,147 points.