CLEVELAND, Ohio — As Koby Altman met with reporters for his season wrap-up presser on Monday, he brought up one key missed opportunity a handful of times.
Donovan Mitchell brought up the same miss in the immediate aftermath of the Cavs season ending last week in a five-game Eastern Conference semifinal loss against the Indiana Pacers.
With the year over earlier than all anticipated for the Eastern Conference’s top-seeded team, there’s plenty of time to think about what could have changed, what could have been different.
And for most inside the Cavs, it seems that their 120-119 Game 2 loss to the Indiana Pacers has become a hyper-fixation, rightfully so, as it put Cleveland in an 0-2 hole for the series.
“You can‘t give away playoff games,” Altman told reporters earlier this week. “You can‘t give away Game 2. That’s going to haunt us forever. And that last minute, minute and a half, you can point to a few things where we need to be tough and I think everyone would agree with that.”
The Pacers went on an 8-0 run over the final minute of Game 2.
It was capped by Tyrese Haliburton grabbing his own offensive rebound on a missed free throw, then hitting a step-back, dagger 3-pointer to give Indiana the lead with only a second remaining.
The Cavs, it turned out, were on the wrong end of two out of three calls in the final two minutes of the game, per the NBA’s Last Two Minute Report (the league’s assessment of officiated events that occur in the last two minutes of games played at or within three points in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime).
The biggest and most egregious missed call came on that Haliburton offensive rebound.
The league’s review showed multiple players crossing the 3-point threshold as well as Haliburton breaking the plane of the free-throw line before the ball touched the rim. Instead of awarding Haliburton possession, giving him a chance for the go-ahead dagger, play should have stopped with Cleveland clinging to a two-point lead and both teams going to center court for a jump ball.
Immediately after the game, Mitchell blamed himself for not grabbing the offensive rebound over Haliburton: “I should have grabbed it. I should have grabbed the ball. I should have grabbed it. It was right there, so that’s on me. I didn‘t mean to cut you off, but I should have grabbed the ball.”
Immediately after Cleveland’s Game 5 loss, he brought up Game 2 twice.
“We had some mental lapses,” Mitchell said last week. “They capitalized, and those can change the series. You lose Game 1, you‘re chasing a series. Game 2 happens, chasing, and you give a lot of energy. Game 3, and then Game 4, like, you’re fighting an uphill battle against a team that has the fastest pace in league history.”
Mitchell also alluded to injuries later in that postgame press conference.
At the time, Cleveland was still without Darius Garland, who missed the last two games vs. Miami and the first two against Indiana with a toe injury.
But they were also without both Evan Mobley (ankle sprain) and De’Andre Hunter (dislocated thumb), who were both injured in Game 1. All three returned for Game 3, the only game the Cavs won of the series.
“I think Game 1 set the tone,” Mitchell said. “I don‘t think it was damn near the same week we had before we played Miami. Game 1 set the tone, and obviously, guys are out Game 2, and like I said, you‘re fighting an uphill battle.”
Of course, with a seven-point lead heading into the final minute of play, the game never should have come down to this singular sequence at all anyway.
It speaks to the bigger narrative of mental toughness that the Cavs will now reckon with throughout the offseason.
“I think if you look at the series, we kind of weren‘t ready for Game 1,” Max Strus said. “I think the Miami series didn‘t really prepare us for that and we kind of slept on that and didn‘t come out with the same force and aggression and that wasn‘t good for us. And then Game 2, can‘t lose that one. The toughness in teams and knowing how to win and toughing games out, that’s where it is.”
So what is it about Game 2 that makes it such a focal point?
It’s not just how and why the Cavs lost, but also represents maybe the biggest missed opportunity of the series.
“Game 2 is going to haunt us,” Altman said once more. “We’re 1-1 going into Indiana, it’s a different series and we have to learn that.”
The Cavs have plenty of time for learning now.