The Cleveland Cavaliers had a dominant regular season that saw them win 64 games and finish as the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, but they didn’t come close to realizing their championship aspirations in the 2025 NBA Playoffs.
The Cavaliers’ season came to an end on Tuesday night in their Game 5 loss to the Indiana Pacers in the second round of the playoffs. Tuesday marked Cleveland’s third home loss in the best-of-seven series, as it also dropped Games 1 and 2 at Rocket Arena.
With the Cavaliers getting bounced in the second round of the playoffs for the second consecutive year, star guard Donovan Mitchell called the loss to the Pacers an embarrassment and said that the team needs to use it as fuel going forward.
Mitchell on his message to the rest of the team: "It's going to be a loud summer. Use it as fuel."
Called this an embarrassment that this team needs to face and can't run from.
— Danny Cunningham (@RealDCunningham) May 14, 2025
Mitchell isn’t the one to blame for the Cavaliers flaming out in the playoffs once again, as he carried the scoring load against Indiana. He averaged a whopping 34.2 points per game on the series and scored 30-plus points in all but one of the five contests. Mitchell also went off for 48 points in Cleveland’s Game 2 loss.
Unfortunately, Mitchell’s backcourt mate Darius Garland was seemingly hampered by injuries all series long. He didn’t suit up in either of the first two games of the series, and even when he made his return to the court, he didn’t look like the highly effective offensive player he was during the regular season.
Garland averaged just 14.0 points per game while shooting 34.2 percent from the field against the Pacers, and he had maybe the worst playoff series of his career so far from a statistical standpoint.
The Cavaliers are left with more questions than answers after failing to get over the hump in the playoffs following an incredibly successful regular season, and fans of the team shouldn’t be shocked if some changes come in the offseason.
Hopefully, Mitchell will be a better player and teammate next season because of the trials and tribulations that his team went through against a Pacers squad that has now made the Eastern Conference Finals in back-to-back seasons.