Tyrese Proctor recorded his first career triple-double with a career-high 24 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, leading a revamped Cleveland Cavaliers lineup to a 127-117 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night at Rocket Arena — at the end of a travel day that began in Miami and was scrambled by the nationwide flight ground stop. All five Cleveland starters scored at least 18 points as the Cavaliers, who rested four regular starters on the second night of a back-to-back, never let Dallas closer than nine points in the second half, Reuters reported.
The Cavaliers’ day started with an airplane problem, not a basketball one. Cleveland lost 133-121 at Miami on Friday night in NBA Cup play, then could not fly home: the Federal Aviation Administration’s nationwide ground stop — the disruption NewsForce247 covered as the FAA grounded all U.S. flights, Ohio airports included — kept the team in Florida overnight, Reuters reported. The Cavaliers rescheduled their flight for Saturday morning, arrived home around noon, roughly seven and a half hours before tipoff, and still had a game to play. The fallout was still rippling through Ohio airports on Saturday, as CVG travelers faced 28 cancellations as the ground-stop fallout lingered.
Head coach Kenny Atkinson responded to the compressed day by sitting Jarrett Allen, Peyton Watson, James Harden and Donovan Mitchell, leaving Jaylon Tyson as the only returning starter from Friday’s loss in Miami, according to Reuters. Mario Hezonja and Thomas Bryant made their first starts of the season, Proctor and Tyson their second, and Maleek Thomas his third — and the makeshift five played like anything but a backup unit.
The scoring came from everywhere. Behind Proctor’s 24, Hezonja scored 22 points, Thomas added 20, Bryant 19 and Tyson 18, Reuters reported. Cleveland broke a 33-33 first-quarter tie with a 38-point second quarter — Tyson scored 12 points in the period, Bryant eight and Proctor seven — to build a 71-53 halftime lead, according to Reuters and the Sportradar scoring summary.
Dallas won both second-half quarters, 38-34 in the third and 26-22 in the fourth, per the Sportradar summary, but the hole was too deep: the Mavericks never got closer than nine points after halftime, Reuters reported. Kyrie Irving scored a game-high 34 points for Dallas, which lost its second straight game to open a three-game road trip.
The lead reached 22 in the fourth quarter — 113-91 after a Proctor three-pointer with 10:27 to play, the Akron Beacon Journal reported in its live game coverage — and even after Irving trimmed the margin to 122-112 with 2:23 left, Cleveland closed the game out without letting Dallas any closer.
The win steadied a Cavaliers team that had been sliding. Friday’s 133-121 loss in Miami — in which Mitchell had 25 points and seven assists, according to the Field Level Media roundup — was Cleveland’s fifth loss in seven games, and the club arrived home Saturday at 6-7 only hours before facing a 7-5 Dallas team. Instead of folding on short rest and short notice, the Cavaliers got the best game of Proctor’s young career and double-figure scoring from every starter.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: Proctor’s triple-double (24 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists) is the first of his career and a career high in scoring; Cleveland’s five starters combined for 103 of the team’s 127 points; and the Cavaliers beat a winning Dallas team despite resting four starters after a ground-stop travel day, per Reuters. What we’re still waiting on: how Atkinson folds Proctor, Hezonja and Thomas back into a rotation at full strength — Saturday’s makeshift lineup made a case for a longer bench, but one game on a strange day is a data point, not a depth chart.
What happens next is rest and reinforcements: the four rested starters are expected back in the lineup for Cleveland’s next game, and the Cavaliers will try to turn a chaotic weekend — a loss in Miami, a night stranded by the ground stop, and a home win behind their reserves — into the start of a steadier stretch. Game details in this report are from Reuters, with quarter-by-quarter scoring from Sportradar.
Photo: Erik Drost, CC BY