CLEVELAND, Ohio — The calendar was ready to flip toward a new year after Wednesday afternoon’s contest, and the Cavs made sure the final note of 2025 inside Rocket Arena gave their fans the vibe they want heading into 2026. Effort first, defense loud, players willing to absorb contact and consequences alike.
Cleveland closed the year with a 129-113 win over the Phoenix Suns, a game that felt less like a tidy celebration and more like a stress test. Appropriate, given where this team is and where it hopes to go.
For stretches, the Cavs looked like a group intent on reminding themselves who they are supposed to be. For others, the old questions resurfaced. By the end, the answers were just loud enough to carry into January.
The foundation was laid early.
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From the opening tip, Cleveland’s point-of-attack defense dictated the tenor. Hounding ballhandlers, shrinking space before Phoenix could organize. Every dribble felt contested. Every entry pass arrived a beat late. Behind them stood size and structure.
With De’Andre Hunter sidelined by illness, Kenny Atkinson leaned into necessity. He opened the second quarter with Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen together, trusting length and reliability over spacing. It worked. Phoenix struggled to turn the corner. Cleveland handled mistakes before they became problems.
One sequence in the first quarter captured the energy they showcased.
Sam Merrill threw an errant backcourt pass that should have been a momentum-swinging disaster. Instead, it became a referendum on effort. Merrill elevated to protect the rim. Craig Porter Jr. and Donovan Mitchell chased into the frame. Phoenix earned multiple looks — and missed all of them. Mitchell secured the long rebound, fired ahead to Mobley, who had stayed upright and alert, and the play ended with a transition dunk.
A mistake flipped into a statement. It wasn’t isolated.
The Cavs built a lead that ballooned to 20. It was loud. It was convincing. But it wouldn’t last, at least not the whole way through.
Atkinson warned pregame that the Suns would feel familiar. Jordan Ott, now running Phoenix’s bench, shares the same basketball dialect. Same emphasis on effort. Same belief that games bend under pressure before they break under talent.
“To me, the Suns are the hardest-playing team in the league right now,” Atkinson said before the game. “They play harder than anybody. That’s what I see. I’m not at the game, but it jumps off the page.”
Phoenix took the early punch and kept working. The game slowed. Bodies hit the floor. The edges frayed. By the middle of the second quarter, Cleveland’s margin had been sliced in half.
This is where the afternoon could have slipped.
Instead, Mitchell delivered the kind of moment that reminds everyone why the Cavs trust him with the wheel.
With the clock draining at the end of the first half, he went coast-to-coast, full steam, through contact, through arms, through doubt. He finished the layup, drew the foul, then tumbled into the first row behind the basket, celebrating with the fans who had leaned forward with him.
It was a message. Cleveland could match the Suns’ physicality. Cleveland could survive the grind. Cleveland would not retreat.
The Cavs jogged into the locker room up 13, the building buzzing but not settled or satisfied.
That unease proved warranted.
The third quarter reopened familiar wounds. Cleveland came out loose with the ball and loose with its discipline. Six turnovers in the period fueled a Phoenix run that felt faster than the Suns’ season-long tendencies suggested. A team ranked near the bottom of the league in pace suddenly feasted in transition.
Ten fast-break points poured in over the first six minutes, eclipsing Phoenix’s entire first-half total.
Once Phoenix got organized, the halfcourt problems compounded. Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks found their rhythm in isolation. Booker danced into his midrange comfort zone. Brooks bullied his way to the rim and into turnaround jumpers. Cleveland collapsed to help, then paid for it.
The Suns buried six of their 11 three-point attempts in the third. Five offensive rebounds extended possessions that already felt draining. Phoenix took 27 shots in the quarter to Cleveland’s 20. Every stop required extra work. Every miss hurt more.
The 19-point cushion shrank to seven by the time the fourth quarter arrived, and Rocket Arena tightened with it.
Atkinson’s response to that discomfort was telling — and revealing.
To open the fourth quarter, the Cavs’ head coach leaned into his youngest options, rolling out a lineup of Jaylon Tyson, Craig Porter Jr. and Nae’Qwan Tomlin flanked by Jarrett Allen and Donovan Mitchell.
On paper, it looked unconventional. On the floor, it looked necessary.
The tempo immediately shifted. The energy spiked. Loose balls became shared responsibilities. Rebounds were chased instead of watched. The game started flowing again.
Tyson hounded ballhandlers and crashed from the wing. Porter dictated pace without overdribbling, pressuring the ball while still keeping Cleveland organized. Tomlin — raw, fearless and decisive — played like someone unconcerned with the moment, which made him perfect for it.
And crucially, the lineup didn’t shrink Mitchell. It liberated him.
With three young players doing the dirty work around him, Mitchell could pick his spots, read the floor and still be himself without having to manufacture every ounce of momentum. The six-time All-Star finished with 34 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists, two steals and a block.
All season, when given opportunity, those three have raised the Cavs’ intensity level. Whether Atkinson was pushed into the decision by Hunter’s illness or finally leaned into what had already been earned hardly mattered. What mattered was the response.
Cleveland’s seven-point lead — fragile and familiar — ballooned to 16 with 8:15 left and then it just kept rising with every passing minute.
The swing was powered by players who weren’t part of the Cavs’ rotation a year ago, players who injected belief.
And in doing so, they made a case that will be hard to ignore moving forward: minutes in tight, competitive games shouldn’t be reserved solely for comfort or résumé. They should go to the players willing to raise the temperature.
As the final horn sounded, it wasn’t relief that filled the arena so much as recognition. This team remains capable of dominance when its habits align. It remains vulnerable when they drift. The gap between the two can feel wide or narrow depending on the night.
On this afternoon, with a new year waiting, the Cavs chose the harder path more often than not.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t clean. But it was enough.
**Next**
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The Cavs host the Denver Nuggets for their first game of 2026 on Friday night. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. Eastern.