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The Cleveland Cavaliers were one of the best teams in the NBA all season long, but it all came crashing down in the second round of the NBA playoffs against the Indiana Pacers. A combination of injuries, a late-game collapse in Game 2, and a great Pacers team that was hot all series long led to a five-game Indiana victory that sent the Cavs home before they knew it.
After the series came to an end, Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson had a nice message for Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle and his squad before the Eastern Conference Finals, via Danny Cunningham of The Inside Shot.
“They were the better team, they deserved it, they played great,” Atkinson said, per Cunningham. “Congratulations to Rick and that group.”
The Pacers will now move on to take on either the Boston Celtics or the New York Knicks with a trip to the NBA Finals on the line. The Celtics are down 3-1 in the series and just lost Jayson Tatum to an Achilles injury, so it will take a huge comeback for Boston to advance.
On the other side, the Cavs have a lot of tough questions to answer moving into this offseason. They finished the regular season with an excellent 64-18 record and were one of the biggest and best stories in basketball, but this is now a third straight season where this core has failed to reach the conference finals together, and this was the best version of it over 82 games.
The injuries play a role in that. Evan Mobley and Darius Garland were both clearly banged up throughout the series and Donovan Mitchell played Game 5 on a bum ankle that severely impacted him on both ends. However, the failure to make a deep run has to be addressed at some point.
Is there a pivot for this Cavs team? That remains to be seen. It's unclear whether Cleveland would want to move on from one of their core four players in an attempt to reshape the roster, but there will surely be a lot of looking in the mirror after their most disappointing playoff exit yet.
