MIAMI (AP) — Kenny Atkinson didn’t need a few months, or a few weeks, or even a few games before figuring out the potential of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
He needed two practices.
Go back to training camp in Bradenton, Florida. The Cavaliers were in Day 2 there, and one of Atkinson’s assistant coaches offered some early observations that have stuck with Atkinson for the seven months that have followed.
“He said, ‘We’re skilled, we’re smart and we play really hard.’ That was the immediate feedback,” Atkinson, in his first year coaching the Cavaliers, recalled this week. “Those three things stood out. Your first impressions count, I guess.”
Those impressions were spot on, too.
Skilled, smart and hard-playing sums up the Cavaliers quite nicely, it turns out. They’re headed to the Eastern Conference semifinals against either Indiana or Milwaukee, after the No. 1 seed on that side of the bracket simply dismantled the Miami Heat in a four-game sweep in Round 1.
Margin of victory in that series: 122 points, the most one-sided matchup in NBA playoff history. Victory margins in Games 3 and 4, both on the road: 37 and 55 points.
“They’re going to be on probably a long run right now,” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said when Game 4 ended, tipping his cap to the Cavs. “They’re well-coached. They have a group that fits and plays the right way. So, we were humbled — but they had so much to do with a lot of how we looked.”
And Cleveland has done this to teams all season. OK, maybe not to this extent; the 55-point win in Game 4 was Cleveland’s largest this season, and the 37-point Game 3 win is now tied for its fourth-largest victory of the year.
But this Cavs team is doing something that not even the LeBron James teams in Cleveland did. Cleveland’s average margin of victory this season is now 10.5 points per game, on pace to be the best in franchise history. Only nine teams have made it through a regular season and the playoffs with such a margin.
Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell was sitting with Cavs rookie Jaylon Tyson during the Game 4 runaway. His message was simple: “This is your first playoff series … and this (stuff) isn’t normal,” he said.
“We have a bigger goal in mind,” Mitchell said. “For us, it’s understanding that this is special. We’ve been doing special things all year. But we didn’t come here just to sweep in the first round and get to the second.”
They’re 68-18 so far this season, including playoffs. There are two teams in Cavaliers history that won more games in a full season: The 2008-09 team went 76-20, and the 2015-16 team — the NBA champions that season — went 73-30.
They’ll be favored in Round 2, no matter if the opponent is Indiana or Milwaukee. They’re riding high right now, too. A team that had winning streaks of 16, 15 and 12 games this season — the second team in NBA history to do that, joining the 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks — is rolling, just like it has been since pretty much the start of that Bradenton training camp.
“There’s a fit and a feel. They know how to play,” Atkinson said. “I don’t think we’re like super-athletic. But we’ve got a lot of guys who know how to play.”
And how to win, too.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press
