From the AP:
Donovan Mitchell had 38 points and a career-high 12 assists, Kevin Love scored 16 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter and the Cleveland Cavaliers rallied to beat the New York Knicks 121-108 on Sunday night.
Mitchell and Love combined for 28 points in the final period as Cleveland outscored New York 37-15. Love made five 3-pointers and Mitchell scored 12 points — both also had four-point plays — in rallying the Cavaliers from a nine-point deficit.
Cleveland made 23 3-pointers in a franchise-record 50 attempts. Mitchell and Love each went 8 for 13 beyond the arc, while Dean Wade was 6 for 8 and scored a career-high 22 points.
“This team never loses its fight,” Love said. “Sometimes, you have to win ugly and we did that tonight. Donovan was finding guys out there, I was finding guys out there, Dean made big shots, and we just got rolling. It’s amazing playing with these guys.”
This was a weird game. Generally speaking, the Cavaliers looked like the better team throughout, as they were hitting threes at a much higher rate (and more efficiently) than the Knicks, but damned if the Knicks weren’t MORE than just “in the game,” but actually took the lead in the third quarter from a particularly strong period from their new point guard, Jalen Brunson (who, overall, probably didn’t have his finest game as a Knick).
Then the fourth quarter happened, though, and the wheels came completely off of the bus. As we all know, the Cavs’ big thing is that they are, well, you know, big. You can almost hear Woody when you see the Cavs followed by the Bucks – “The East is big, man.” Size has been, and seems like it will be, a problem for the Knicks this season. The Knicks really only have Mitch and Hart as effective “bigs” (Sims is glued to the bench), since whatever Randle does, even when he does good things, they’re not particularly big things, as he rarely acts like a big out there (no blocks or offensive rebounds, just one blocks and 13 offensive rebounds through the Knicks’ first six games), and is instead more of a secondary point forward…who just doesn’t pass that much in general (but did get seven assists in Cleveland). And when the other team is very big, like Cleveland, Mitch/Hart aren’t even all that effective, really. And if Randle doesn’t do a lot of “big” things, Obi does practically none on defense. He was roasted in the fourth.
A lot of different guys had some decent impact on the game, but overall, it definitely felt like one of those games where attrition would eventually benefit the better team, and that looked to be Cleveland throughout most of the night. That was a shame, as avoiding said attrition could have brought the Knicks a really big win.