{"id":126410,"date":"2025-03-01T11:33:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T16:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=126410"},"modified":"2025-03-01T11:33:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T16:33:37","slug":"cavs-players-sound-off-after-celtics-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/01\/cavs-players-sound-off-after-celtics-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavs Players Sound Off After Huge Win Against Celtics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> pulled off their signature win of the season after coming back down 22 points<\/a> to beat the Boston Celtics in TD Garden on Friday night. In what felt like a playoff atmosphere the Celtics jumped out to a 25-3 lead putting the Cavs on the back foot. However, after that, Donovan Mitchell<\/a> poured in 41 points and the Cavs outscored the Celtics 120-91 across the final 43 minutes.<\/p>\n

Cavs Players Sound Off After Huge Win Against Celtics<\/h2>\n

Following the win, Kenny Atkinson, Mitchell, and Darius Garland<\/a> spoke<\/a> about the impressive performance postgame.<\/p>\n

“Our leadership, Donovan especially,” Atkinson said in a postgame interview. “He never gets too high or too low. The message on the bench was great, all our guys, they never got exasperated and that [25-3 start] was an avalanche. But we just kept at it, great composure, great resiliency.”<\/p>\n

The Cavs’ resilience was on full display as Jayson Tatum<\/a> and Jaylen Brown<\/a> gave them everything they could handle. Tatum had 30 first-half points and finished with 46, while Brown was steady, chipping in with 37 himself. It is unusual for a team to lose when their best two players combine for 83 points, but the Cavs did that on Friday.<\/p>\n

As mentioned above, Cleveland outscored Boston by 31 points after the Celtics’ early run. In all four games against Boston this season, the Cavs trailed by at least 14 points in all games. However, their elite offense has kept them in every game, with all four games being classified as ‘clutch’ games.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/Carter_Shade\/status\/1895687306134372405<\/p>\n

Despite Cleveland’s success and huge win, both of their wins against Boston this season have been with the Celtics missing a starter. On Friday, Boston was without Kristaps Porzingis<\/a> and Jrue Holiday<\/a>. Regardless of the Celtics’ health, however, the Cavs have proven themselves as true contenders in the league.<\/p>\n

Mitchell’s Comments<\/h3>\n

Mitchell, though wants to keep this season<\/a> in perspective noting that the Cavs haven’t ‘done anything yet’.<\/p>\n

“At the end of the day, we’ve done a lot of good things,” Mitchell said postgame. “But, I keep telling my guys we haven’t done anything yet. It’s a measuring stick, these guys [Boston] have won a championship and we want to continue to get to where they’re at.”<\/p>\n

Mitchell has been a man on a mission against the Celtics this season. He has scored over 30 points in all four games, averaging<\/a> 35.5 points per game against Boston this year. However, he saved his best performance for last, scoring 41 points in Friday’s win on 13-26 from the field. Mitchell has been the Cavs leader all year and his stellar performances in big games are a major reason Cleveland is 49-10.<\/p>\n

Mitchell’s leadership on the court doesn’t go unnoticed, Garland mentioned<\/a> his love of sharing the court with the Cavs star<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Crazy as hell,” Garland said. “He’s a dog, he’s a dog. That’s what he does though, Spida [Mitchell] he loves this arena so I’m glad he’s on our team.”<\/p>\n

Mitchell wasn’t the only impressive performance from the Cavs. Both Garland and Evan Mobley<\/a> came up big for the team. Garland got the Cavs going after being down 22, he finished the game with 20 points and seven assists. Additionally, Mobley had the best quarter of his career in the 4th quarter Friday. He scored 11 points and grabbed eight huge rebounds down the stretch to help the Cavs close out the win.<\/p>\n

The Last Word<\/h3>\n

This was the biggest win of the season for the Cavs for more than one reason. Despite the Celtics’ injuries, the Cavs went into Boston and beat the defending champions from down 22 points. As well, Cleveland extended their league-high nine-game win streak and improved to 7.5 games ahead of Boston for the one seed in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a9 Winslow Townson-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Cavaliers pulled off their signature win of the season after coming back down 22 points to beat the Boston Celtics in TD Garden on Friday night. In what felt like a playoff atmosphere the Celtics jumped out to a 25-3 lead putting the Cavs on the back foot. However, after that, Donovan Mitchell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5174,"featured_media":126426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,9,62],"tags":[1937,900,3966,450,798,236],"class_list":["post-126410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-cavaliers","category-nba","tag-darius-garland","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-evan-mobley","tag-jaylen-brown","tag-jayson-tatum","tag-kenny-atkinson"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126427,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126410\/revisions\/126427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}