Donovan Mitchell scored a season-high 36 points, and the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Chicago Bulls 119-113 on Monday night to become just the eighth NBA team to start a season with 12 straight wins.
Darius Garland scored 17 points for Cleveland, and Evan Mobley had 15 points and 11 rebounds. The Cavaliers scored at least 110 points for the 11th time this season. Their 12-0 record is the best start to a season since the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, who went 24-0 to open their campaign. That Warriors team finished the season 73-9, another record, although they lost the NBA finals to … the Cavaliers.
“It’s great to be a part of history,” Mitchell said. “I never want to take those things for granted along the way when we do it in different ways. We do it in ways where we blow up teams. We are winning from behind. We win close games. And it’s someone different every night leading the charge. It’s always a group effort.”
Garland rolled in a layup with 24 seconds left, and Mitchell made two free throws to help close it out.
Zach LaVine scored 26 points for Chicago, which lost for the fifth time in six games. Coby White and Nicola Vucevic each had 20 points. The Bulls opened up a nine-point lead with 4:26 left in the third quarter before Cleveland came back late for a second straight game.
Five of the other seven teams that started a season 12-0 went on to play in the NBA finals.
“This group is locked in,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. “I do think there is [been] questions about this group, can they get to the next level, can they take the next step? So, I think when you have that, you have that chip [on your shoulder]you focus even more. There’s another level of concentration, another level of focus, another level of detail that these guys are using to take us to 12-0 so far.
Atkinson is in his first season with Cleveland and Mobley gave him credit for the changes he made to a team that lost 4-1 to the Boston Celtics in last season’s Eastern Conference semifinals.
“Kenny did a great job of infusing everybody,” Mobley said after the game. “We knew the defensive system was coming, and he had a scheme for us that he wanted to work out. And he fixed that really well, and I feel like everybody just bought in right away. From then on, we just went up from there.”
