



Kenny Atkinson didn’t need a few months, or a few weeks, or even a few games before figuring out the potential of the Cavaliers.
He needed two practices.
Go back to training camp in Bradenton, Florida. The Cavaliers were in Day 2 there, and one of Atkinson’s assistant coaches offered some early observations that have stuck with Atkinson for the seven months that have followed.
“He said, ‘We’re skilled, we’re smart and we play really hard.’ That was the immediate feedback,” Atkinson, in his first year coaching the Cavaliers, recalled this week. “Those three things stood out. Your first impressions count, I guess.”
Those impressions were spot on, too.
Skilled, smart and hard-playing sums up the Cavaliers quite nicely, it turns out. They’re headed to the Eastern Conference semifinals, after the No. 1 seed on that side of the bracket simply dismantled the Heat in a four-game sweep in Round 1.
Margin of victory in that series: 122 points, the most one-sided matchup in NBA playoff history. Victory margins in Games 3 and 4, both on the road: 37 and 55 points.
“They’re going to be on probably a long run right now,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said when Game 4 ended, tipping his cap to the Cavs. “They’re well-coached. They have a group that fits and plays the right way.”
And the Cavaliers have done this to teams all season. OK, maybe not to this extent; the 55-point win in Game 4 was the Cavs’ largest this season, and the 37-point Game 3 win is now tied for its fourth-largest victory of the year.
But this team is doing something that not even the LeBron James teams in Cleveland did. The Cavaliers’ average margin of victory this season is now 10.5 points per game, on pace to be the best in franchise history. Only nine teams have made it through a regular season and the playoffs with such a margin.
Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell was sitting with rookie Jaylon Tyson during the Game 4 runaway. His message was simple: “This is your first playoff series ... and this (stuff) isn’t normal,” he said.
“We have a bigger goal in mind,” Mitchell said. “For us, it’s understanding that this is special. We’ve been doing special things all year. But we didn’t come here just to sweep in the first round and get to the second.”
Butler delivers in return: Jimmy Butler converted three free throws with 58.7 seconds left, grabbed the game-clinching rebound with 4 seconds to go and then made two more free throws on the way to 27 points in his return from a pelvic injury, sending the Warriors past the Rockets 109-106 in a heated Game 4 on Monday night in San Francisco to take a 3-1 lead in the first-round Western Conference playoff series.
The teams return to Houston for Game 5 on Wednesday night as seventh-seeded Warriors try to close out the second-seeded Rockets.
Butler was back after sitting out Game 3 with a pelvic contusion and deep gluteal muscle bruise suffered on a hard fall when he was fouled early in Game 2.