{"id":344683,"date":"2025-12-13T05:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T05:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344683\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T05:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T05:06:10","slug":"cavs-mitchell-posts-highest-scoring-4th-quarter-of-nba-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344683\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavs’ Mitchell posts highest-scoring 4th quarter of NBA season"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — Down 15 with one quarter to play against one of the NBA’s worst teams, Donovan Mitchell<\/a> played with a bit of desperation in the final period.<\/p>\n

“Be aggressive,” he said. “Can’t really lose this game coming out of the break.”<\/p>\n

Mitchell scored 24 of his 48 points in the fourth quarter, and the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> rallied to beat the Washington Wizards<\/a> 130-126<\/a> on Friday night. With both teams coming off a five-day layoff, the Cavaliers shot just 15-of-53 from 3-point range. It would have been worse if not for Mitchell’s 8-for-15.<\/p>\n

The Wizards fell to 3-20 on the season.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

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Mitchell scored 11 points in about 2\u00bd minutes to start the fourth. He ended up with the highest-scoring fourth quarter in the NBA this season, surpassing the 22 points by Orlando<\/a>‘s Jett Howard<\/a> on Nov. 23 against Boston<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mitchell’s 24 points also tied the second most by a Cavaliers player in the fourth quarter in the play-by-play era (since 1997-98). Darius Garland<\/a> scored 27 points in the fourth quarter of a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a> in November 2023. And LeBron James<\/a> had 24 in the final quarter of a loss at Chicago<\/a> in April 2008.<\/p>\n

Mitchell is averaging a league-best 9.6 points per game in the fourth.<\/p>\n

“You’re playing a team that’s 3 and whatever, and you’re down 15, you can kind of tuck your tails and … kind of give in, right?” Mitchell said. “But we found a way.”<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers trailed by 17 during a third quarter in which they allowed 40 points. It was 100-85 entering the fourth. Mitchell finally tied the game at 122 with a 3-pointer, then scored inside with a minute remaining to give Cleveland the lead.<\/p>\n

Then came a moment when the 6-foot-3 guard appeared overmatched — a jump ball between him and 6-foot-11 Marvin Bagley III<\/a>. But both players mistimed their jumps, and the ball ended up with Cleveland’s Lonzo Ball<\/a>, who made two free throws with 30.9 seconds left that put the Cavs up by four.<\/p>\n

So Mitchell could look on the bright side after the game, while understanding that the big deficit was concerning in itself.<\/p>\n

“That can’t happen. We can’t be in that position,” he said. “We have to figure it out.”<\/p>\n

ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON — Down 15 with one quarter to play against one of the NBA’s worst teams, Donovan Mitchell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-344683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}