Mitchell's name is now forever etched in the history books, with an autographed box score headed to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.
Mitchell also received spirited pep talks from vice president of communications B.J. Evans and Cavaliers luminary Brad Daugherty. No one was willing to reveal the actual words, but Mitchell termed it helpful encouragement to bust him out of an uncharacteristic four-game funk. That’s the PG-rated version anyway.
“I’ve played with a lot of really, really good players and they rarely have two bad games in a row,” Caris LeVert told cleveland.com. “I know he felt like he played bad last game. But I knew he was going to have a big game. Now 70? I didn’t know that was in the cards. But I knew he was going to have a big game. Even when he started slow, I knew he was going to figure it out. Missed shots don’t affect him.
During the between-quarter stoppage, Mitchell and Bickerstaff had a brief chat. The two have built a foundation of trust since Mitchell’s arrival from Utah in the September blockbuster trade that has launched Cleveland back into contention. Even though Mitchell usually sits early in the fourth before returning after a couple-minute breather, Monday was an exception.
The early-season MVP candidate, who heard those bellows from the sellout crowd for much of the second half, calmly buried the first free throw. “The basketball gods love these moments,” Bickerstaff said. “When you do the things that you’re supposed to do, they show you favor, and I think tonight was an example of that.”
“Luka had two of them,” Mitchell said. “I watched the first and I was like, ‘That would be cool if I could go ahead and get one.’ Once I made the first free throw, that’s when I was like, ‘OK, God’s got something for me here.’ That can go a few ways. It happened to go my way and I made the layup. Once I made that, I sat in the huddle and J.B. and I started laughing and I was like, ‘Might as well win the game at this point.
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