Donovan Mitchell says lady in elevator wished Cavs ‘terrible luck’ before they beat Wolves: ‘She set the tone’

After the Cleveland Cavaliers earned a 124-117 road win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday, Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell revealed that an unlikely source of motivation surfaced before the game.

He said that a lady wished the Cavaliers bad luck in an elevator ahead of the matchup, and that seemingly gave Mitchell (and perhaps some other Cavs) an extra jolt of motivation to come out on top against a Wolves team that had won five of its last seven games heading into the contest.

Mitchell later added more context.

“There was a bunch of us in the elevator,” Mitchell said. “… And somebody said, ‘What time y’all play tonight?’ We said, ‘7.’ And then, ‘Good luck.’ The group in the back said, ‘Good luck.’ And then this lady was just adamant. She was just like, ‘No, we wish them bad luck. We wish nothing good happens to them.’ Really adamant about it.

“And I didn’t say nothing. I laughed. I forgot who I was in the elevator with, but I was just like, ‘Damn, alright.’ And from that point on, it was like alright, just something to prove. So shouts out to her. … She wished us terrible luck, bad luck, like really emphasized it too, so shout-out to her. … In the hotel, going to the bus, yeah, yeah, going to the bus, she wished terrible luck. It was very adamant and very persistent about the luck being bad and not great, so yeah, shout-out to her.”

Mitchell was the star of the night for Cleveland. He scored a game-high 36 points while shooting 12-of-27 from the floor, and he also contributed eight rebounds, seven assists and one steal in about 34 minutes of playing time.

The Cavaliers might have already had plenty of motivation to beat the Timberwolves even before the elevator comments were made. After all, Cleveland was on the heels of an embarrassing 20-point loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, which marked the team’s biggest margin of defeat in a game so far this season.

Plus, a few days before falling to Oklahoma City, the Cavaliers picked up another loss to the Indiana Pacers, meaning Cleveland had lost two of its last three contests before beating the Timberwolves.

Fortunately, despite the fact that the Cavaliers have shown their mortality of late, they still have quite a bit of separation from the rest of the pack for the top record in the Eastern Conference standings.

The Boston Celtics are the No. 2 seed in the conference at 29-13, and they’re 6.5 games back of the 35-6 Cavaliers. It’s of note that the Celtics are the defending NBA champions, as they eliminated the Dallas Mavericks in the 2024 NBA Finals.

After playing their past three contests away from home, the Cavs will return to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse to take on the Phoenix Suns on Monday afternoon. Phoenix currently sits as just the No. 11 seed in the Western Conference, but the team is riding a two-game winning streak and just recently earned a four-point road victory over the Detroit Pistons on Saturday.