CLEVELAND, Ohio — Donovan Mitchell is the face of the Cavs’ franchise. Inside the organization, they call him “President,” a nickname earned not just by stature or scoring totals, but by the way he carries himself.
He’s the one who shows up when the lights are bright, whether on the floor or in the press room. He leads by example by competing with teammates on who can show up at the gym first for practice or recovery. He’s also the one who walks into the interview room, win or lose, searching for the words and answers that explain what just happened on the floor.
But Sunday night was different. [After Cleveland’s 117-115 loss to the Boston Celtics](https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2025/12/cavs-comeback-attempt-falls-short-against-celtics-117-115.html), Mitchell never made that familiar walk.
Instead, he sat at his locker and stared into a kind of emotional quiet that felt larger than the room itself. His teammates spoke a few steps away, voices rising and falling as they replayed the final seconds of a game that slipped through Cleveland’s hands again.
And while he was right there, seated beneath the white fluorescent light, it felt like Mitchell existed somewhere else, in a place made of silence and rewound tape loops in his head.
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The Cavs had no business being within a breath of victory. Down by 21 points in the third quarter, they had fought back, slicing the deficit possession by possession with Darius Garland and Mitchell combining for 22 of the Cavs’ 36 fourth-quarter points. Miraculously, they trailed by just one with 0.7 seconds remaining.
For a team that has spent the early part of the season teetering between potential and frustration, this was a chance to grab a defining moment. To steal one in an unforgiving league.
Kenny Atkinson called a timeout. The play that followed wasn’t drawn for Mitchell. It asked him to stand on the sideline and make the inbound pass — an unusual role for a franchise player built for big moments.
“We were trying to take it out with our best passer in that situation,” Atkinson explained afterward.
The design was simple in theory. A down screen for Darius Garland to set him up for a potential game-winning three. If Boston switched or blew it up, Evan Mobley was the release valve on a quick post-up. The Celtics, though, defended like a team with deep playoff experience that has seen every twist a late-game playbook can offer. They flattened the floor into an umbrella, zoning their coverage just enough to disrupt Cleveland’s timing and turn a rehearsed action into an improvisation.
With 6-foot-11 Amari Williams looming over him, extending to a 7-foot-5 wingspan that engulfed Mitchell’s passing window, the five-second violation clock wound down. In an instant, he forced the ball to Mobley, who turned for a 21-foot fadeaway that never left his fingertips in time. The buzzer sounded. The arena gasped. And the Cavs walked off without truly taking the shot that could have won the game.
They fell to 12-9, seventh in the Eastern Conference, another close call buried beneath a season full of them.
This moment might feel familiar to some. Maybe none more than Mitchell.
Last postseason, in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, the Cavs botched another late inbound — this one with 27.5 seconds remaining. That failure crawled through the summer with Mitchell, replaying on an endless loop. That night he wasn’t the inbounder; Max Strus was.
“I just was trying to get open myself, but I couldn’t move, man,” Mitchell said in May after the game that shifted the series.
It’s part of why he reshaped his offseason. He trained to be sharper earlier, to get to his peak faster, to make sure he’d never feel immobilized by fatigue or circumstance again.
Sunday’s loss didn’t carry the stakes of a playoff series, but this season Mitchell has spoken constantly about process over outcome. How the habits built now sustain the moments ahead.
And yet there he was, sunk into the corner of the locker room, replaying one more late-game sequence that unraveled before he could change it.
No one knows how many times the final play flickered through his mind. How many alternate angles he imagined. How many ways he felt it could have gone differently. The truth is, the world won’t know at all.
The All-NBA guard wasn’t made available to the media.
For someone who usually carries the responsibility of speaking for the locker room, the silence said enough. It said the loss stung.
It said that for all the numbers and accolades and expectations, Mitchell is still searching for the version of the Cavaliers that can finish something meaningful — and the version of himself that can steer them there.