CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Cavaliers are a vastly different team now than they were three years ago. Yet, here they are in a similar spot they were then: Losing to the New York Knicks in the playoffs in humiliating fashion. Just this time, it’s in the Eastern Conference Finals instead of the first round.
Cleveland, OH
10 Takeaways from Cavs Game 3 loss to Knicks: The gap between these two teams has never felt wider
And somehow, the gap feels wider now. Or at least it has through three games.
The Knicks outclassed the Cavs in nearly every area, as they came away with a 121-108 Game 3 victory in a contest they never trailed in. They now have a 3-0 lead with a chance of ending Cleveland’s season on Monday.
It’s clear who’s been better through three games. The Knicks are just a complete basketball team in a way that the Cavs aren’t.
Offensively, they have a better understanding of how they want to attack their opponent. They’re lethal at all three levels. That variety means they aren’t overly reliant on the three-ball or getting to the free-throw line.
Each starter can pass, dribble, and shoot at an average level or better. If you sell out to stop one, there’s someone behind them capable of making you pay for it.
They aren’t without deficiencies defensively. Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are both below-average defenders for their position, but the team compensates for that well.
The Knicks know how to keep both from being on an island defensively. The player they’re trying to hide is comfortable hedging and then recovering back to his man, while the more adept defender fights through the screen. That’s something you need to be proficient at if you know your opponent is going to try to single someone out.
But more than that, they have principles that guide them defensively. They’ve relentlessly tagged the roller and have sold out to stop interior passes and easy looks around the rim. That can make them susceptible to outside shots, but hasn’t thus far this postseason.
This stands in stark contrast with the Cavs.
Cleveland doesn’t have those same guiding principles on either end. They’re too willing to take the path of least resistance. That has allowed the Knicks to bait the Cavs into taking the shots they want them to offensively (threes) and attacking the guys they want to defensively (James Harden).
The Knicks are surrendering open threes, and the Cavs still can’t make them pay.
Before the game, both coaches talked about the open three-point looks the Cavs generated through the first two games.
Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson preached wanting his team to stick to the process. “Keep taking them,” Atkinson said after mentioning the three-point looks his team took in Game 2 were in the 93rd percentile.
Meanwhile, Knicks head coach Mike Brown said that his team needed to “do a better job” of contesting open looks. “We’ve gotten a little lucky. They’ve missed some shots.”
That luck continued. The Cavs overall went just 12-41 (29.3%) from three. On the series, they’ve now missed 89 triples and are shooting below 30%.
It’d be one thing if this were a normal defensive game plan, but the Knicks are simply daring the Cavs best shooters to beat them, and they inexplicably aren’t. That includes Harden and Donovan Mitchell who combined to go 4-17 from beyond the arc.
“We gotta make shots,” Harden said. “We haven’t really made a shot since the first quarters in Game 1.”
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Fatigue may have something to do with the missed shots. The Cavs haven’t had consecutive off days for three-and-a-half weeks now. Tired legs inevitably make it more difficult to shoot. But that isn’t an excuse that you could really use, considering what came before.
Cleveland had golden opportunities to win Games 4 and 6 against the Toronto Raptors, and didn’t come out with the force needed in Game 6 against the Detroit Pistons. Taking care of a few of those winnable games would’ve given them more rest, so this wouldn’t have been an issue.
“We did it to ourselves, we can’t be mad now,” Mitchell said.
You pay for every mistake that you make in the playoffs, either in the moment or in the future. Cleveland’s previous errors are catching up to them now against a team they need to be playing at or near the top of their game to beat.
You aren’t going to win many playoff games when your best player has the worst plus/minus in the game.
The Cavs lost the minutes Mitchell played by 22. This is the fourth time he’s been a -10 or worse this postseason, and they’ve lost each of those games.
The holes in Mitchell’s games are showing through in this postseason, but particularly in this series. When the outside shot isn’t falling, his only counter is to get to the basket. That has allowed him to still put up respectable scoring numbers. Although the impact on the game isn’t what it needs to be.
There’s more to basketball than just scoring. He hasn’t made consistent enough efforts at defending, rebounding, or playmaking for others to be a positive contributor in those areas. That’s part of why he hasn’t been able to carry lineups without Harden (-7.3 net rating, 23rd percentile).
Mitchell is being outplayed by Brunson for the third time in the postseason dating back to their time in the Western Conference. Both are similar from a talent perspective as undersized scoring guards. But Brunson is better at all the little things that show through in the postseason.
Brunson’s ability to set up his teammates (14 assists in Game 2), compete defensively, and attack in the midrange are all things that Mitchell doesn’t consistently have in his game. That versatility has allowed him to elevate his groups on days he doesn’t have it going as a scorer.
It was easy to see where the Cavs went wrong when they fell on their face three years ago. That group was inexperienced and didn’t have enough outside shooting to be functional in the postseason.
This team is considerably better. You don’t luck your way into being a conference finalist. However, figuring out the next step forward is more difficult, especially for the most expensive roster in the league that doesn’t have many additional levers to pull.
There’s no simple solution to this. LeBron James deciding to come back home and signing for far below market value would help, but it doesn’t necessarily fix everything given he’ll be 42 at this time next year. There would still be holes defensively, and the offense wouldn’t be smooth with multiple ball-dominant players.
Pivoting further by moving more integral pieces is easier said than done. Would you really want to trade Evan Mobley, one of the few Cavaliers who’s elevated his game in the playoffs? Does it make sense to further break up the nucleus of one of the most successful eras in franchise?
At the same time, it’s dangerous to continue betting on a group that has shown the same flaws in multiple postseason runs. That includes deciding whether or not to give Mitchell a further extension this summer.
Firing Atkinson would be the simplist solution. It’s easier to get rid of the coach than it is the team. But I’m not sure this is a coaching issue when we saw this group go seven games with the previous fall guy.
The gap between who the Cavs are and who they want to be is wider than it’s been since Mitchell was traded over. And there’s no easy answer for any of this.
The Cavaliers are one loss away from what could be an unpredictable summer.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com) Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
There are mornings when I sit down at this keyboard, look at the Browns quarterback discourse, and wonder whether I should have gone into a more stable line of work. Such as selling timeshares from inside an office that has been lit on fire. Because here we are in late June, with no pads, no preseason games, no live pass rush, and apparently everyone from television personalities to team-adjacent announcers to webdorks like me has solved the Browns quarterback battle. That’s 90% of the news items out there this morning.
But I don’t care, and look on that endless speculative churning as simply being noise at this point.
One story that matters this morning is Andrew Healy leaving Cleveland for Minnesota, which I wrote about several days ago. He’s joining the Vikings as an assistant general manager.
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If your first reaction was, “Okay, front-office guy changes jobs, wake me when someone throws a slant,” I get it. Executives mostly become famous when something goes wrong, which is a cruel system, but, hey, I didn’t design the planet. I just live here.
But Healy’s departure is a real loss. Alec Lewis’ Athletic reporting had two quotes that should get your attention. Browns offensive analyst Dom Borsani called Healy “a little bit like a unicorn,” because he combined research background and technical aptitude with a traditional scouting lens and an understanding of coaching schemes. Former Browns senior software developer Zach Zelinsky, now with the Arizona Diamondbacks, called him “probably the smartest guy I’ve worked with in sports.”
That’s not normal praise. That’s not “great teammate, first guy in, last guy out” boilerplate. This is people inside the machine saying the Browns just lost one of the people who helped connect the spreadsheet world to the football world. And that matters because the modern NFL is not analytics versus scouting anymore — or at least it shouldn’t be. The good organizations are the ones where the numbers people understand what the scouts are seeing, the scouts trust that the numbers can challenge their assumptions, and the coaches don’t throw the laptop into Lake Erie.
Healy’s Sloan Sports Analytics bio says that, for the last five years, he “led the integration of data and advanced insights into all parts of football operations.” It also says he started with the Browns in 2016 as Senior Player Personnel Strategist, helping to develop methods for valuing players, making game decisions, and evaluating draft assets. Before that, he created projection systems for Football Outsiders, and before that, he was an economics professor with a Ph.D. from MIT. So, yes, he is smarter than your humble webdork. This is not a high bar, but still.
So, naturally, I was worried about this and did what I always do when I’m looking for common-sense answers: I talked to Lane. He let me know what he “was told all the systems have been in place, with others handling the process. It doesn’t feel like they are overly concerned with his departure. As they have told me previously, you never like to lose assets, but you plan accordingly.”
The Browns still have Andrew Berry. They still have people in the research department. This is not a one-man shop collapsing because the smartest guy took his stapler to Minneapolis. But when you lose Paul DePodesta to the Rockies and Healy to the Vikings in the same general era, you lose institutional memory, decision-making frameworks, and the people who knew why certain models were built the way they were. Don’t expect the loss of the two to indicate much about how the Browns use analytics – it hasn’t fallen out of favor or suddenly joined Maurice Carthon’s playbook in the annals of football history.
This is the type of stuff fans don’t see until two years later, when the draft board feels different, the fourth-down decisions get twitchy, or the team suddenly stops finding value in places it used to find value. Maybe Berry replaces that brainpower cleanly. Maybe the remaining group steps forward. Maybe the Browns are fine. But losing a “unicorn” from a front office is like losing a left guard: nobody talks about it until the pressure starts coming up the middle.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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THE WATERCOOLER
THE LIFT
Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…
Space.com reports that scientists are drawing up a research blueprint to examine whether warming Mars is actually feasible — not because anyone should be selling lakefront property in Olympus Mons by Thursday, but because the work could help humanity understand what sustainable habitats beyond Earth would require. University of Chicago geophysical scientist Edwin Kite told Space.com, “We do not yet know enough to create a biosphere from scratch,” which is both humbling and oddly comforting. We can’t even get everyone to agree on the Browns quarterback depth chart, but sure, let’s keep the option open for Mars.
WRAPPING UP
When not trying to identify the precise moment quarterback analysis becomes interpretive dance, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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Three people are dead after a double murder-suicide in Lakewood.
Police said a man called his ex-wife early Sunday morning, saying he shot two people at a home on Chesterland Avenue.
According to investigators, the man threatened to shoot himself.
When officers arrived at the scene, they saw a man in a truck speeding away.
Police chased the truck until it stopped on Warren Road.
The 45-year-old man exited the vehicle with a gun to his head and shot himself moments later, police said.
Police found 35-year-old Richard Eastin and 33-year-old Amanda Wakut dead inside the kitchen of the home on Chesterland Avenue.
The investigation is ongoing.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – Officers from the Cleveland Division of Police Fourth District responded to the sound of gunshot Saturday evening.
According to police, officers were in the area of the 3200 block of E 93rd Street when they heard gunshots around 8:30 p.m.
Officers responded to the area and located an adult man with gunshot wounds.
They immediately began to provide first aid until EMS arrived.
When EMS arrived on scene crews continued care and transported the man to the hospital.
Police said during the course of the investigation, officers identified and detained a 33-year-old man.
Officers also located two firearms and several casings from the scene.
The victim was treated at the hospital, but was later pronounced dead by hospital staff.
The Cleveland Police Homicide Unit is investigating the incident, and no further information is available at this time, police said.
Copyright 2026 WOIO. All rights reserved.
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