Pressure Cooker: 3 Cavaliers that need to do well in Knicks series

No. 3: Donovan Mitchell

The Cavs best player in Donovan Mitchell has plenty of playoff experience. He played in seven series in his career with the Utah Jazz. He’s started 39 of those games in those series. He was 17-22 in those games and his Jazz teams were never able to get past the Western Conference Semifinals. So it’s a bit of a mixed back of good and bad when you consider Mitchell in playoff series’.

I believe in this inaugural Cavs playoff series, his experience will be a bigger factor in determining how this Cleveland team does moving forward. In the regular season, he averaged over 28.3 points a game, well over his 24.6 points a game average in his career.

Mitchell has made the most of his playoff performances as he’s usually outdone himself compared to the regular season. To this point, in playoff games, he has recorded 19 games where he went for 30 or more points. That includes four games of scoring more than 40 points and one game of scoring 50 points. Mitchell has scored 40 points or more in this regular season 13 times, including four games in a row of that mark to close out his regular season.

I think he’ll be ready to put his team on his shoulders but will that be enough? The pressure from that has to be in the back of his mind. He will obviously want to do all that he can for this team and the fans of the Wine and Gold. That means there is pressure, even if he won’t want to admit it.

It took a heroic performance by Mitchell back in late October to secure the Cavaliers’ lone win against the Knicks in the regular season and that will likely be needed in this series. Maybe not for every game, but there will be a game or two where that pressure will be there, and Mitchell will need to answer the bell.