[Fedor] ‘This is unprecedented’: Donovan Mitchell wants Saturday’s game cancelled with Cavs grounded in Miami
—
MIAMI — Friday’s nationwide ground stop is preventing the Cavs from going home.
At least, until Saturday.
Cleveland, which played the first game of its already-scheduled back-to-back and had original plans to leave Miami late Friday night, won’t be able to fly back until Saturday morning.
Despite the disrupted travel, with a now scheduled 8 a.m. Saturday morning bus ride to the airport and 9 a.m. flight out of Miami, a source told cleveland.com the plan is to play Saturday night’s game as scheduled.
The Cavs will host the Dallas Mavericks at Rocket Arena for a 7:30 p.m. tipoff — a chaotic schedule set-up that was not popular in Cleveland’s locker room.
“This is unprecedented,” star guard Donovan Mitchell said following the 133-121 loss to the Heat. “Back-to-back. Three-hour flight. It was already going to be a tough one. But if they say we have to play then we have to play.”
So, would Mitchell prefer the league cancel Saturday’s game against the Mavericks?
“Me, personally, yeah for sure,” Mitchell said.
He’s not the only, either.
As one player was getting dressed and trying to figure out whether the team would be staying at the same Miami hotel, he mumbled about the revised travel schedule being like “AAU basketball.”
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “They should cancel it.”
With a 9 a.m. flight, the Cavs likely won’t land back home until around noon. That gives them only a few hours before heading to the arena.
“Never in my time in the league,” Mitchell said when asked whether he encountered a situation like this before. “I think the craziest travel thing I’ve ever had was the COVID situation. Make adjustments. Figure it out. Go from there.”
“If we’re playing then we have to play,” Tyrese Proctor added. “As soon as the ball goes up, we have to compete and come out with a win, no matter the circumstances. They are tough circumstances, having to travel the day of the game. But it is what it is.”
On Friday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop on all departing flights due to a communication issue affecting air-traffic control.
In the hours ahead of Friday’s game with Miami, members of the organization were calling nearby hotels to see if they had rooms available, especially with another team — the Detroit Pistons, who play the Heat at Kaseya Center Saturday night — already in town.
“Haven’t heard,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said when asked pregame if there was any clarity about whether the team could leave on time. “If not, we will just sleep on the bus.”
Well, they don’t have to do that. They were able to rebook the same hotel.
Although the four-hour ground stop was eventually lifted, and airplane departures were allowed to resume Friday night, the team couldn’t secure a new pilot until Saturday morning.
As if the three-game road trip, which started with an embarrassing loss in Charlotte, couldn’t have gotten any worse.
“There’s no feeling sorry for ourselves,” Atkinson said. “It’s part of it. You just adapt. We have to get on that plane in the morning and try to go get this next one.”