CLEVELAND — At a time when Travis Kelce (some know him better as Taylor Swift's boyfriend), Jason Kelce and Joey Chestnut were all in the building , the night still ended up belonging to one man: Dean Wade .
Because Tuesday night was The Dean Wade Game.
Facing the undisputed best team in the NBA this regular season, and doing so without All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley (the former is out for at least another week with a knee injury , and the latter exited Tuesday night's game with a sprained ankle), the Cavaliers were all but sunk, trailing the Boston Celtics by 22 points into the fourth quarter.
And then for 12 minutes of basketball, Wade became the best player on the planet. He poured in 20 points against the team that almost assuredly will be the East's No. 1 seed. He hit 3 after 3. He held his own on the defensive end as the Celtics offense sputtered against the wave of momentum and an arena thrown into bedlam.
Wade outscored the Celtics by himself in the fourth quarter. And, after leading the Cavs back from a 22-point deficit, he added the exclamation point in the final seconds, following a Darius Garland missed layup with a put-back dunk that gave Cleveland a 105-104 lead, which ended up the final score.
He hit the shot that cut it to a one-possession game as the Cavs continued their furious comeback. He assisted on the basket that tied it. He hit the 3-pointer that gave the Cavs the lead. And he eventually dunked home the game-winner.
"The rim looked like a swimming pool, so that helps," Wade said with a smile. "Man, it's a great feeling. It's kind of like your mind's quiet, and the rim looks huge. That's all I can tell you."
Trailing the top-seeded Celtics without Mitchell, without Mobley and without much hope, the Cavs kept punching back. Perhaps they were spurred on by coach J.B. Bickerstaff not being entirely happy with the effort in Sunday night's loss to the New York Knicks . After the game, Garland came back to one word.
"We're relentless," Garland said. "This group is super confident in themselves, and we had Dean Wade tonight, so that made it a lot easier for us. … We know this group is very relentless, like I said, and we don't back down from nobody."
Wade, along with Georges Niang , have provided a spark off the bench, at times, but it has come with some dry spells. Lately, Wade and Niang have both struggled, at times seemingly disappearing on the offensive end. Bickerstaff noted he wasn't worried about them a few days ago. That came to fruition in a big way Tuesday night.
"This is a version of Dean Wade that we've seen in the past, and it's one that we press and press and press for him to be," Bickerstaff said. "When Dean Wade is playing with extreme confidence, he's a hell of a basketball player."
There was a lot of star power in the building, on the floor and off it, as the Kelce brothers chugged beers and revved up the crowd, and Chestnut won a pierogi eating contest. And yet, throughout the fourth quarter, it was all about Wade, and the Cavs looking to funnel him the ball.
"They had a bigger guy on him who wanted to play back and off of him," Bickerstaff said. "If you looked at the first half, the way they guarded him, they just went and sat in the paint and he had open looks, but they continued to do it. He didn't hesitate. He kept shooting, and his teammates kept finding him."
And those teammates had a simple message: Don't stop shooting.
"I've got to give a lot of credit to Georges," Wade said. "We came out in the fourth quarter and he was, like, 'Man, empty the clip. It doesn't matter. We're not going home with [anything left]. If you got your shots, shoot 'em every time.' We were just free flowing."
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis1@gannett.com. Follow him on Threads at @ByRyanLewis .
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cavaliers Dean Wade leads Cavaliers over Celtics with 20-point quarter
