Cleveland and Dallas in the NBA playoffs repaid their opponents with heavy defeats

In the first duel, Cleveland relied too much on Donovan Mitchell. This time, he had much more significant support from his teammates, when the entire base five plus substitute Caris LeVert played well. Mitchell was able to create mainly in the first half and had enough strength to score 16 points in the third part to decide the game.

“We tried to get our teammates more involved, thereby occupying the opponent’s defense so that I could get shots. We put them under pressure today,” said Mitchell, who had 29 points, 7 rebounds and 8 assists. Evan Mobley added 21 points and 10 rebounds and LeVert also had 21 points. It was Cleveland’s first road win in this year’s playoffs.

“We expected them to play better, but we just couldn’t respond to that,” veteran Boston center Al Horford said. According to ESPN, the 24-point win is the most in a playoff since 1991 by a team that lost the first game by double digits.

Dallas also showed a completely different face than in the first duel. So far in the playoffs, he has struggled from long range. This time, however, his 3-pointers won the game in Oklahoma City, as the Mavericks hit 18 3-pointers. Five of them were given by Luka Dončič, who so far had only a 22 percent success rate in the playoffs. But today he shot accurately and collected 29 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists.

However, the second hero this time was not Kyrie Irving, who gave only 9 points and 11 assists, but PJ Washington, who made 7 triples and also collected 29 points, represented him in points. Tim Hardaway added 17 points from the bench.

Although Shai Gilgeous-Alexander traditionally led the Thunder with 33 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists, only Jalen Williams joined him from teammates with 20 points.

The game broke in the middle of the last quarter, when the home team missed seven shots in a row, while on the other side, Doncic scored twice and Dallas ran to a double-digit difference, which they maintained until the end.