SALT LAKE CITY — The Cavs made a reservation at the Phoenix Mercury practice facility — just in case.
Following another lousy performance against the Suns on Friday night — a loss that extended their skid to a season-high four games — coach Kenny Atkinson was planning to use that state-of-the-art downtown building as a proverbial penitentiary.
Displeased with repeated mental mistakes on defense and a flawed process at that other end of the floor, the plan was a detailed film session followed by a rigorous practice that would allow the stumbling Cavs to address — and perhaps — correct their countless wrongs from the past week.
But Atkinson recognized, with help from the player leadership council, that it would’ve been an overreaction.
No need for that.
In the face of adversity, staying true to who you are is paramount.
So, instead, the Cavs played H-O-R-S-E — the kind of off-day fun that has become a staple of Cleveland’s culture under Atkinson.
“There are so many checks and balances in this league,” Atkinson said after [Sunday’s 120-91 streak-snapping triumph over the tanking Jazz](https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2025/03/cavs-snap-season-long-losing-streak-with-120-91-win-over-tanking-jazz.html). “You dive deeper into the losses both analytically and on film and then you feel the locker room and see how the guys are feeling about it. Our fun practice didn’t help us make shots but sometimes you have to lighten the mood at this point in the season. We didn’t overreact.”
A departure from the norm would’ve been easy to justify. Four straight losses. Slippage on defense. Waning focus. Substandard play. Baffling decision-making. A dipping spirit. Iffy body language. At various points over the last week, everyone admitted their play wasn’t good enough. Donovan Mitchell pointed the finger at himself late Friday night in Phoenix.
Pound the podium. Send a message. Be stern. Teach the guys a lesson. Show more urgency.
Right?
The Cavs are the Eastern Conference’s best team. They have the second-best record overall, behind the 59-win Thunder. This isn’t a young, rebuilding team that needs discipline, structure and training. That’s not the environment Atkinson created.
Changing a season-long approach because of one poor stretch didn’t feel right. To anyone.
“We know what it is,” Mitchell told cleveland.com while walking out of Utah’s Delta Center. “This is such a long year and we hadn’t been playing like ourselves. It was so uncharacteristic. But sometimes you go through that. For me and the rest of the guys, it was just like, ‘Let’s have fun and enjoy this.’
“We have done a lot this year and we’re not going to let these four games bring us down. (expletive) happens. That was our mentality. You see how it translated. Taking care of business but also having fun. You can lose sight of that throughout such a long year. We have done so much good (expletive). So much. The sky is not falling. If this had happened in November, no one would be having this conversation. It’s so easy to lose sight of that. It’s so easy to get caught up in what’s happening most recently.”
Sunday was the fourth stop on this exhausting five-city, 10-day trip through multiple time zones that Atkinson called “hellacious.”
The first half seemed to be proof of that — a nasty combination of heavy legs and an earlier-than-usual start in the Utah altitude. Cleveland shot a wretched 19 of 49 (38.8%) from the field and 3 of 25 (12%) from 3-point range as the ball repeatedly clanged off the front of the rim.
And yet, the Cavs led nearly the entire half, by as many as 12.
“We were doing all the right things in the first half, but the ball wasn’t going in,” Ty Jerome explained. “That’s what we have been talking about. Just continue to do the right things. We just stayed with it. Our swagger, definitely got that back a little bit.”
At one point in the third quarter, Atkinson was relaying a tactical adjustment during a stoppage. Darius Garland had his own suggestion.
_Coach, what about fun?_
“I do think we were in a little patch here where we haven’t had that joyous sprit,” Atkinson admitted. “It was good to see us get back to that.”
For one game against woefully overmatched Utah, the over-the-top celebrations were back. Same with the postgame jokes. The central locker room topic was Garland’s breakaway, off-the-backboard alley-oop attempt to either Mitchell or Jarrett Allen that went awry.
“Miscommunication,” Garland said with a smile. “I should have been more selfish and took the layup. I mean, both can dunk. Just go jump.”
“It’s really my fault,” Mitchell added as Garland interrupted the postgame session to address the blunder. “I take the blame for that.”
It was one of the few missteps during a more prototypical second half.
Cleveland ripped off 15 unanswered points out of the locker room, increasing the lead to a then-game-high 21. It eventually reached 32, with the Cavaliers winning the turnaround third quarter, 37-19. That allowed Atkinson to sit Mitchell and the other starters for the entire fourth quarter.
In all, Cleveland outscored Utah, 69-46, in the second half while shooting 53.2% from the floor. It led for more than 45 minutes overall — the kind of dominance that became the norm in the first few months.
“The reason why it felt so nasty is because we care and we have set such high standards,” Mitchell said. “But four games doesn’t define what we’ve done. At some point we were going to have a bad stretch. This is all part of the process. And if you don’t enjoy the process you are going to lose sight of what this is all about.
“When we get to April, May and June, we’re not going to win by 20 every night and (expletive) is going to be hard. So, how do you deal with that? There will be highs and lows. You have to be able to dig out of adversity and keep the same mindset and same approach throughout.”
Exactly what Atkinson did on the off day. No panic. No change. Business as usual.
“It happens,” Garland said. “Everybody loses games. We know how locked in we have to be to win important games and just tried getting back to that. We knew we were going to hit a wall one day. That’s just how the world works.”
Around this time last year, the tone was different. Mitchell was visibly miffed following a road-trip-opening blowout loss to Denver. He was eager to get a heavy-handed message across, famously — and angrily — saying, ‘It’s (expletive) April” in an epic rant that included multiple other curses.
He remembers that vividly. Even chuckled when it was brought up Sunday.
“This isn’t the same,” Mitchell said when asked why his comments were calmer amid the now-snapped losing skid. “Last year was so inconsistent. It was so up and down. Guys were in. Guys were out. You couldn’t say, ‘This is who we are.’ Maybe that one stretch where we went 19-1 but we didn’t have D.G. and Ev (Evan Mobley) and we were still figuring (expletive) out. This team, we have shown our level of consistency. We haven’t had a bad stretch all season — until this past week. We’ve already shown who we are. So, it was more like, ‘Just breathe, OK?’
“Give Kenny credit for keeping it steady. It just feels completely different around the team this year.”
About 10 minutes before his conversation with cleveland.com, Mitchell strolled toward the showers. He paused and cracked a joke while Jerome was icing his feet and answering questions.
“Ty, would you say the Cavs are back,” Mitchell asked. “Nah, I’m just joking.”
Even thousands of miles away, the team was keenly aware of the emotional swings back home over their struggles. They never gave into them.
“You can’t get too high or too low over the course of 82 games. You will drive yourself crazy,” Jerome said. “We have the second-best record in the league. We had some things we needed to clean up and we still do. Just because we won, don’t mean you don’t have to clean anything up. Just stay level-headed. We’re trying to build every day toward what we want to do in the spring and summer.”