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Tim Bontemps, ESPN
CLEVELAND — Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell will miss Game 4 of Cleveland’s Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Boston Celtics with a left calf strain, the team announced.
Mitchell appeared to be limping in the latter stages of the fourth quarter of Cleveland’s 106-93 loss to the Celtics on Saturday night, which came after Mitchell played the first 22 minutes and 41 seconds of the second half before being subbed out with 1:19 remaining and Boston leading by 13 points.
He appeared on the injury report Sunday with the left calf strain — a new injury — and then wasn’t visible at any point of the team’s morning shootaround Monday ahead of Game 4.
The left calf strain is the latest in a series of left leg issues Mitchell has dealt with ever since the All-Star break. Mitchell missed 15 of Cleveland’s first 20 games after the break with a couple different issues, including lingering ones in his left quad and knee. He also appeared to be limited by it at times during the playoffs, though it hasn’t stopped him from putting together a remarkable playoff run through his first 10 games of this postseason.
The 27-year-old has averaged over 35 points across the past six games for the Cavaliers, and has scored at least 25 in all of them — something only LeBron James has done in Cleveland franchise history.
That included Mitchell going for a combined 89 points in Games 6 and 7 of the first-round series victory over the Orlando Magic, and scoring 29 — including 23 in the second half — of Cleveland’s Game 2 win in Boston.
Across 43 minutes in Game 3, Mitchell finished with 33 points on 12-for-22 shooting, including making 7 3-pointers. The rest of Cleveland’s roster, on the other hand, shot just 5-for-24 from 3-point range, and scored a total of 60 points. It was a similar story in Cleveland’s Game 1 loss, which saw Mitchell again go for 33 points while the rest of the team combined to score 62 points and shoot 7-for-31 from 3-point range.
With Mitchell sidelined, those shooting splits from across the roster will obviously have to change for Cleveland to have a shot in Game 4, with Mitchell’s teammate, Darius Garland, saying at shootaround Monday morning that it will take a group effort and an increased level of aggression to make up for Mitchell’s absence in the event he wasn’t going to be able to play.
“Just be aggressive,” Garland said. “Play as a team, keep the ball moving, have them chasing us around a little bit, and then trusting each other. We have a lot of guys that are super confident in themselves, so we need to be super confident tonight and make the extra pass and play as a team.”
Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen, meanwhile, will again sit out, meaning it will be seven consecutive games missed with a bruised rib. Allen suffered the injury midway through the first-round series against Orlando.