If you’re an optimist in Cleveland right now, you’re probably thinking of 2016. It is exceedingly rare for an NBA team to come back from a 3-1 deficit when they aren’t facing Doc Rivers, but the Cavaliers are responsible for the most famous 3-1 comeback in NBA history. If you can overcome Stephen Curry and the 73-win Golden State Warriors, then surely, Tyrese Haliburton and the No. 4 seeded Indiana Pacers can’t be insurmountable, right? Right?!
Well, it’s complicated. Let’s start with the obvious: if the ankle injury Donovan Mitchell suffered in the first half of Game 4 is at all serious, this series is over. It’s as simple as that. Mitchell entered Game 4 averaging 41.3 points per game in this series. He was really the only reliable positive the Cavaliers had going for them in the first three games. Maybe, if everything else was working, they could eke out wins without Mitchell. Cavalier lineups featuring Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen and no Mitchell managed to outscore opponents by 11.7 points per 100 possessions this regular season, according to Cleaning the Glass. But Cleveland has plenty of other problems to contend with here.
Garland, Mobley and De’Andre Hunter are all playing hurt. More than that, they’re playing frustrated. Hunter may not have gotten ejected for his hard shove on Bennedict Mathurin in Game 4, but the fact that he felt the need to deliver it is not especially promising for this team’s mindset. Mathurin has been instigating all series, but the Cavaliers are falling for it. Garland is fouling left and right. The Pacers are in their heads.
That’s something Cleveland can ultimately control. What it can’t is shooting variance. Nobody in the NBA made more than 40.2% of their catch-and-shoot 3s this season. Indiana made 38.3% in the regular season. They’re up to 44.8% in this series. Cleveland is down to 31% from 39.3% in the regular season. Some of that is defense. A lot of it is luck.
The superior team — and at this moment, it’s not clear that’s what Cleveland is — can usually afford a luck loss. Maybe even two. The Celtics are still favored over the Knicks despite trailing 2-1 because Vegas knows that those losses were mostly the result of uncharacteristically poor shooting. But those losses still count. They remove your margin for error, and the comedy of errors that was the ending of Game 2 might ultimately be what swings this Pacers-Cavs series.
That’s the one that really hurts. As bad as Game 4 was, it was one game, and Cleveland has its own Game 3 blowout as a counterbalance. Overall, it’s not as though Indiana has dominated this series. There have been two blowouts and each team has one of them. There have been two close games and the Cavaliers couldn’t finish theirs off. That loss makes them vulnerable to more bad shooting luck. All it takes is one hot shooting night from the Pacers or one cold one from your own scorers and the series is over. If it’s balanced, and the games are close, you’re at least getting to the late-game coin flip stage.
Of course, that’s not where anyone wants to be with Indiana right now. The Pacers are 4-0 in clutch games this postseason. There are only three seven-point comebacks in the final minute of regulation or overtime to win a playoff game in league history, and two of them have come from the Pacers in the past two weeks.
Are there adjustments to be made here? Sure. The Pacers largely went away from their two-big lineup as a response to Indiana’s shooting in Game 4. Allen played only eight first-half minutes. But the Allen-Mobley duo absolutely dominated Game 3 with a +41 point-differential. A lot of that was due to the 3-2 zone Rick Carlisle obviously solved in time for Game 4. It’s hard to play two big men against a team with five-out spacing, but the Allen-Mobley duo is so central to Cleveland’s identity that abandoning it so quickly reeks of desperation.
It’s not as though playing smaller juiced the offense. The spacing it generates has only been theoretical to this point. Cleveland scored only 32 points in the paint in Game 4. The Cavs’ shooters didn’t make shots and they had far less rim gravity on the floor. Maybe bullying Indiana on the glass and at the basket is the way to go. The Pacers ranked 28th in rebounding this season. Cleveland might have to live with some of Indiana’s iffier 3-point shooters firing away to protect the basket and try to own the boards. If the Pacers get hot again, as we’ve covered, it’s over.
Even if Mitchell is healthy enough to keep playing, someone else needs to generate offense. Cleveland is coming off of the greatest offensive series in NBA history against Miami. Scoring against this Pacers team should not be this much of a slog. But Ty Jerome is 4 of 25 in the past three games. There goes Cleveland’s bench creator. Garland’s toe is pretty significant here as well. He’s visibly playing for fouls on his rare drives to the basket. His jumpers aren’t falling. Mobley was startlingly uninvolved in Game 4. Cleveland’s leap to the second-greatest offense in NBA history this regular season was predicated on Mobley stressing defenses as a ball-handler. That helped create a lot of the advantages that turned into open triples. In his current state, Mobley may not be capable of creating those advantages. Suddenly, an offense with creation everywhere has been reduced to “let Donovan cook.”
Remember that Cleveland still has two home games left and has already won once on the road. If Mitchell can play, they will probably be favored in at least two, if not all three remaining games this series could include. The 64-win team from the regular season is still in there. It’s just been out-executed, out-coached and out-lucked on almost every level through four games. These things can turn quickly, but a lot of things need to go right for Cleveland to win three in a row. If the 2016 Golden State comeback was possible, so is this one. For now, though, it’s not looking especially likely.