CLEVELAND – The Cavaliers spent most of the season with the best record in the NBA, clinched a playoff berth before St. Patrick’s Day and reached the postseason as the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Now, their magical season is over, well before they or most league observers had planned.
Cleveland lost Game 5 to the Indiana Pacers, 114-105, and was eliminated by dropping this Eastern Conference semifinal series, 4-1. It is the second consecutive year in which the Cavs’ campaign ended with a 4-1 defeat in the conference semis, but, simply put, that wasn’t supposed to happen this year.
No one seemed to tell the Pacers, whose full-court pressure, physicality on the perimeter and timely shooting overwhelmed the Cavs at times and was enough to overcome early and late deficits at other points throughout the series.
Indiana, the No. 4 seed in the East, is headed to the conference finals for the second consecutive year. The team that beat the Pacers in the third round last year after dropping the Cavs, the Boston Celtics, are in deep trouble in their series against the New York Knicks, trailing 3-1, with star Jayson Tatum lost due to an Achilles tear.
So much of the discussion about the Eastern Conference this season centered around the Cavs and Celtics seemingly being on a collision course for an epic conference finals. Now, Cleveland is out, and Boston faces the enormous challenge of trying to overcome a huge deficit without Tatum.
In Tuesday’s loss, Tyrese Haliburton led the Pacers with 31 points and six 3s, and Pascal Siakam added 21 points. Donovan Mitchell, playing with a sprained ankle, scored 35 points, including 16 during a furious fourth-quarter comeback attempt that ultimately stalled. Evan Mobley finished with 24 points and 11 rebounds.
The Cavs led by as many as 19 in the first half, but were done in by the relentless tempo the Pacers pushed on offense and defense and worn down over the game’s final 24 minutes. Cleveland, a prolific 3-point shooting team, shot just 26 percent from deep while the Pacers bombed their way to 15 3s.
Cleveland played this series with Mitchell, Mobley, Darius Garland and De’Andre Hunter banged up for most of it; Sam Merrill, a reserve guard and sharpshooter, missed Game 5 with a neck strain.
The Cavs won 64 regular-season games, 14 more than the previous season and the second most in franchise history. They opened the year by winning 15 straight — just the fourth team in league history to open the season on such a streak — and were just the second team ever to compile three winning streaks of at least 12 games. They were the sixth NBA team to reel off two winning streaks of at least 15 games, including a franchise-record 16-game streak in February and March.
When the season was over, Cleveland had the top offense in the NBA (121.9 ppg), the second-best shooting and 3-point shooting team and a top-10 defense. Mitchell, Garland and Mobley were All-Stars, and Mobley went on to be the first player in franchise history to be named NBA Defensive Player of the Year. Coach Kenny Atkinson, hired after the team dismissed J.B. Bickerstaff as coach following the playoff loss to the Celtics in 2024, oversaw all of this success and won NBA Coach of the Year. Ty Jerome was a runner-up for NBA Sixth Man of the Year after enjoying what was easily his best season.
Teams with regular-season resumes like this don’t typically lose this early in the playoffs. Five of the first seven teams to begin a season 12-0 reached the finals.
MYLES TURNER SEALS THE DEAL.
PACERS ADVANCE TO THEIR SECOND-STRAIGHT EASTERN CONFERNCE FINALS ‼️ pic.twitter.com/aeN0cysZJF
— NBA (@NBA) May 14, 2025
Last season was marked by internal drama all year over Mitchell’s contract status and the disconnect between Bickerstaff and Mitchell that was souring the mood in the locker room. But the 2024-25 season was a harmonious campaign, in which the players appreciated Atkinson and seemed to thrive under the changes he made. The Cavs also took a big swing at the trade deadline, dealing for Hunter, adding coveted size and shooting to the perimeter and a switchable defender who could hang with players much bigger than his 6-8 frame.
The Cavs went 8-8 over their final 16 games, but few saw that stretch as a warning sign. Atkinson was purposefully tinkering with lineups and star players rested on occasion to prepare for the postseason. No player on the roster — Mitchell included — averaged 32 minutes. They were rested and poised for a deep playoff run.
The postseason began simply enough with a four-game sweep of the Miami Heat, in which the Cavs’ 122-point margin in the series was the largest in playoff history. But near the end of Game 2 in the Heat series, Garland re-aggravated a toe injury from the end of the regular season that would prove to haunt him and his team.
Garland was unable to play Game 1 or Game 2 against the Pacers despite nearly two weeks off. And in the fourth quarter of Game 1 against Indiana, during which the Cavs held a slim lead, both Mobley and Hunter suffered injuries on consecutive possessions that would force them out of Game 2.
Cleveland dropped Game 1 with poor shooting down the stretch, but built a commanding lead that looked like it would hold in Game 2, despite missing those three key players. But with Garland out, Mitchell exhausted and Jerome struggling, the Cavs couldn’t get the ball across halfcourt down the stretch, made a litany of mistakes at both ends and were sunk by Haliburton’s 3 near the buzzer. Cleveland had led by 14 early in the fourth quarter and Mitchell scored 48 points in a stunning loss.
The Cavs briefly recovered in Game 3, in which all the injured players returned and Mitchell scored 43 points, becoming just the second Cavalier ever to score 40 or more points in consecutive playoff games. But it was short-lived. Cleveland trailed by 41 points at halftime of Game 4, and Mitchell left the court while warming up before the start of the second half with an ankle injury. The Cavs lost 129-109.
“I almost want to stop that narrative, because I don’t think it’s fair to anybody,” Atkinson said before Game 5, so as not to blame any injury for how the conference semifinals had progressed to that point.
The Cavs now head into an offseason where they have no good reason to fire the coach, Mitchell (and Garland and Mobley and Jarrett Allen) are all under contract and they have a payroll that is on track to be the third highest in the NBA at $213 million. Salaries will push the Cavs over the NBA’s second apron, which is the most punitive tax teams can pay and also restricts what they can pay free agents and how they can execute trades to improve the roster.
Jerome is the team’s biggest free agent. After a brilliant regular season in which his 12.5 points per game was the highest average among all players averaging fewer than 20 minutes, he struggled so mightily against the Pacers that he was out of Atkinson’s rotation entirely by the start of Game 5. His struggles — he shot 24 percent and was abused on defense heading into Tuesday — probably cost him a chance at a lucrative contract from another team in free agency.
It’s almost too soon to talk about what’s next for the Cavs. After everything they accomplished from late October to mid-April, they never imagined their offseason would start now.
This story will be updated.
(Photo: Ken Blaze / Imagn Images)