The Cleveland riders were not going to be eliminated on Friday evening, whatever the result of match 3 of their second round series with the Indiana Pacers, but it was “a thousand percent” an essential game in the eyes of the star goalkeeper Donovan Mitchell.
Mitchell delivered a performance worthy of the stakes, paying 43 points and adding nine rebounds and five assists to transport the riders to a comfortable victory of 126-104. The series is now 2-1 in favor of the Pacers, which is a much more manageable deficit than 3-0 for the seeded n ° 1 of the Eastern Conference, which abandoned the first two games at breathtakingly.
“For me and my mind, I don’t necessarily say (it was an essential game) for everyone. I have somehow kept that for me,” said Mitchell. “Because understanding if you go down 3-0, it’s difficult. So yes, it was a must. We left a slide at home, left the fans at home, so we have to find a way to bounce back and we did it. In the end, all that we did is win a match, we have to do it again on Sunday.”
Mitchell, who collected 48 points in the collapse of the horse -off match 2, joined LeBron James on Friday as the only players in the history of the riders to record consecutive 40 points in the playoffs. He also joined Jayson Tatum, Kevin Durant and Michael Jordan as only players in the past 50 years with at least 90 points and 25 have made free throws in two games in the playoffs.
It took a few minutes in Mitchell to finally get on the board, which he did on a 3 -point in the middle of the first quarter, and this is only the second when he really drove. He scored 11 points in the context, corresponding almost to the total of the pacers in a team (13), and helped the riders to build an advance of 21 points before the break.
In the second half, Mitchell rejected the race after the Pacers race, which valiantly tried to return to the game but could not remove another spectacular return. In particular, after the Pacers reduced the deficit to 11 at the start of the fourth quarter, Mitchell responded by scoring or helping 16 consecutive riders to push the advance to 24 and essentially end the match.
The Cavs are now firmly back in the series, but know that they still have a lot of work to do. A defeat in match 4 on Sunday and they are back in a serious hole.
“It’s 2-1, but we didn’t do anything,” said Mitchell. “We have won a match. We have to do it again. This is my message. We are not celebrating, we are not smiling. We came here to take two games, and we made one. The next will be the most difficult game in the series.”
