CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 James Harden hit three clutch shots in the final two minutes, Donovan Mitchell scored 35 points and the Cleveland Cavaliers beat Detroit 116-109 on Saturday to cut the Pistons\u2019 lead to 2-1 in the Eastern Conference semifinal series.<\/p>\n
Harden bounced back from two mistake-marred performances to finish with 19 points and Jarrett Allen scored 18 for the Cavaliers, who will look to even the series when they host Game 4 on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Mitchell reached 2,000 career postseason points in his 73rd game, tied for third-fastest among active players and ninth in NBA history.<\/p>\n
Detroit\u2019s Cade Cunningham had his second career postseason triple-double with 27 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists, but also committed eight turnovers. Tobias Harris added 21 points.<\/p>\n
Duncan Robinson\u2019s 3-pointer with 3:14 remaining tied it at 104 before Cleveland, which is unbeaten in five playoff home games, was able to seize control.<\/p>\n
Max Strus intercepted an inbound pass by Cunningham at midcourt and made a breakaway layup with 2:28 left.<\/p>\n
Harden, who drew plenty of criticism for turnovers in the clutch in the first two games, kept the Cavaliers in front with big shots. The 17-year veteran hit a 16-foot step-back jumper to extend the lead to 108-104. After a driving dunk by Cunningham, Harden made a floating 7-footer to put the lead back up to four.<\/p>\n
Cunningham responded with a 3-pointer before Harden provided the decisive blow with 25 seconds remaining on a step-back 3-pointer while being guarded by Harris to make it 113-109.<\/p>\n
Robinson was short on a 3-pointer after a timeout and Mitchell made three free throws down the stretch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 James Harden hit three clutch shots in the final two minutes, Donovan Mitchell scored 35…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-659186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}