CLEVELAND — Donovan Mitchell wore a nifty tracksuit and tinted glasses in the building, so dark you couldn’t see his eyes.
Only cool characters wear sunglasses at night (or inside), right?
Say this about Mitchell and, to a larger degree, his teammates and coaches in Cleveland: There has been no panic during this topsy-turvy 2026 playoffs so far. Blow Game 6 in Toronto and lose on a bouncing ball? No big deal, “protect home court” with the season on the line in Game 7, as Mitchell said.
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Lose the first two games of the second round in Detroit, knowing no team in NBA history has come back from a 3-0 deficit in a playoff series? Fine, throw on that tracksuit and shades, pull up to the gym, drop 35 points and grab 10 rebounds, almost with a shrug, as Mitchell did to help the Cavs win Game 3 Saturday, 116-109.
But this second-round series with Detroit, while it is asking questions of James Harden and, perhaps, coach Kenny Atkinson, isn’t so much about them as it is about the guy in the tracksuit.
And maybe beyond that, it’s about a decision the Cavaliers made two years ago.
See, when JB Bickerstaff was relieved of his duties in Cleveland, after his depleted Cavs team was wiped out of the second round by Boston in five games, there really never was a good answer given for his dismissal. It was hard to explain because, in part, the Cavs had improved every year under his direction. There was tangible progress.
But it was also tough for president Koby Altman to explain because he couldn’t quite come out and say, “Well, it was either JB or Donovan, and we picked the franchise player.” But that is, essentially, what happened.
To be clear, and this was already pointed out after Game 1 by my colleague and friend Jason Lloyd, Bickerstaff lost the locker room. It was not, by any means, just Mitchell. Out of Cleveland’s current rotation, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Max Strus, Sam Merrill, and Dean Wade were all in that room, too.
But Mitchell’s voice inside those walls is unmistakable, and he was among the first to grow frustrated by how Bickerstaff ran the team, treating veterans like younger players who didn’t know any better, by employing a relatively unimaginative offensive scheme, and also by the stress placed on Mitchell to carry the burden on offense.
Mitchell was due a contract extension two years ago, and he signed it. Last month, he told The Athletic he did it, in part, because of the food the Cavs serve (no, really, he did, but he meant it as an example of how far the organization goes to take care of its players). Mitchell may not have barged into Altman’s office and demanded Bickerstaff be let go, but if Mitchell had wanted Bickerstaff to remain as coach — he probably would have.
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Again, Mitchell is not alone here in this. Bickerstaff had lost the room (though Caris LeVert, who sat out Cleveland’s Game 5 against Boston with a knee bruise two years ago, seems to be doing just fine with Bickerstaff now on the Pistons), and teams move on from coaches all the time.
It’s hard to criticize Altman for dismissing Bickerstaff, because of the enormous stress small-market teams are under to keep top talent. And it certainly wasn’t Atkinson’s idea to fire Bickerstaff.
But if the Cavs largely have the same nucleus, and one supposedly significant upgrade in Harden over Darius Garland, and they turn around and lose to Bickerstaff in a second-round series two years later — wouldn’t that be … bad?
The Pistons have a superstar in Cade Cunningham, and their players are massive — there is so much bulk they can trot out on the floor that Bickerstaff wisely coaches the team to win with defense. Should they prevail, the Pistons would deserve all the credit. But at the same time, it would also mean the players who no longer wanted to play for Bickerstaff, believing he was holding them back, had the best chance to prove they were actually capable of delivering more without him, and didn’t.
That’s why this series isn’t really about Harden, even if it has felt like a referendum on him.
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Harden had been the goat, in a bad way, in this series, with turnovers and missed shots and lack of shot attempts in the second half of Game 2, so he had a redemption game of sorts on Saturday. He scored nine of his 19 points in the fourth quarter, and scored seven consecutive points for Cleveland in a span of about 60 seconds with less than two minutes left in the game, including a 3-pointer with 25.9 seconds to go for a 113-109 advantage. His three turnovers were a breath of fresh air compared to the coughing fit he’s endured starting with Game 3 of the previous round.
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Mitchell said he watched Harden bring it home instead of demanding the ball because “he’s James Harden, right?”
“Every game calls for something different, and you’ve got to find a way to manipulate it and be selfless,” Mitchell said. “And I think, as a collective, that’s the biggest thing.”
“I am who I am. he is who he is, but that’s what makes us so dynamic,” Mitchell said.
Harden has a mixed bag of brilliance and failing colossally short over his 17 career playoff runs (33 series). As for Atkinson, expectations were high when the season began — and they still are — for the Cavs to go where Bickerstaff did not take them: the Eastern Conference finals and beyond.
Mitchell has reached the playoffs in each of his nine NBA seasons. The first eight all ended without his team getting past the second round. It was true for the two campaigns when Bickerstaff was his coach in Cleveland, and, last year, it was true with Atkinson.
This is a much easier discussion to have now, with the Cavs having won Game 3 and gotten back into this series. Mitchell seems to have found something on offense, he’s had two consecutive games of 30 or more points after averaging just 20.5 points over his previous six playoff games. Mobley and Allen attacked the Pistons’ strength — interior defense — with vicious drives and dunks at the rim, even if behemoth Jalen Duren was standing there.
It’s clear this series means something more to Bickerstaff, whose clipped answers about his former players in this series say everything that Bickerstaff isn’t saying out loud. He knows why he isn’t coaching in Cleveland anymore, and, while he has moved on and is beyond happy in Detroit (he was just awarded a contract extension), who among us wouldn’t take the chance to prove our own doubters wrong? His will be staring him in the face for the next two to four games.
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What does it all mean for Mitchell? He is too smart to take that bait. He was asked before Game 1 that very question, about Bickerstaff’s presence with the Pistons elevating this series in Mitchell’s mind, and he said, “we have a lot of respect for each other.”
“He just got a contract extension, well-deserved, but (his presence) doesn’t add anything to the importance of the series,” Mitchell continued. “We had our time here in Cleveland. We did amazing things here. We’re trying to continue to do amazing things in Cleveland, so it doesn’t add anything, but we have the utmost respect for each other.”
We aren’t asking the hardest questions right now because Mitchell and Harden and Allen and Mobley were all very strong in a hard-fought win in Game 3.
They were all very cool at the end while under perhaps even more pressure than we realize.