Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell didn’t sugarcoat his response to Cleveland’s collapse in Tuesday’s 115-104 overtime loss to the Knicks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.
“I said it in the locker room, just that we lost, we f–king blew it,” Mitchell said after his team squandered a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter at Madison Square Garden.
Mitchell, who tallied 29 points, explained that the Cavaliers will analyze the film and look forward to Game 2 on Thursday in New York.
Warning: Explicit language
“It’s one loss. It’s a bad loss, but all we can do is go back and watch the film and fix it,” Mitchell explained in his postgame press conference.
“We could’ve lost by 40. It still would’ve been 1-0 … We played pretty solid for three quarters or so. We’ll make adjustments and go from there.”
It seemed the Cavaliers were on their way to a third straight road win this postseason until a late Knicks surge.
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson scored 17 of his game-high 38 points as New York went on a 44-11 run over the final 12:45 of the game, including overtime.
Mitchell went scoreless in that span, missing all five of his shots, partly due to the defensive prowess of Knicks guard Landry Shamet.
Cavs center Evan Mobley logged 15 points and 14 rebounds.
James Harden scored 15 points, but was just 1-for-8 on 3-pointers and had six turnovers for Cleveland.
“That can’t happen. But it did,” Mitchell said. “We play in two days. We can’t sit here and let it kill our momentum, kill what we’ve been doing. It’s not a good loss.”
