PHILADELPHIA – It wasn’t easy, but the Cleveland Cavaliers saw their season-opening winning streak reach a baker’s dozen Wednesday night.

Thanks to Donovan Mitchell scoring 13 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter, the Cavaliers became the sixth team in NBA history to win at least 13 straight games to start a season with a 114-106 victory claim on the Philadelphia 76ers, who are without All-Stars Tyrese Maxey, Paul George and Joel Embiid.

“We just stick together,” said Darius Garland, who led Cleveland with 25 points. “We’re just taking it one game at a time. We know we have a target on our back, so we have to come with that aggressiveness and that confidence that we’re going to win every game, and that’s what we did.” Although, like I said, long nights and not much sleep, but we have to stick together and just keep going, just to be great.

Of the five previous teams that started 13-0, four made it to the NBA Finals, but according to ESPN Research, only the 1993-94 Houston Rockets won the title.

Despite Mitchell’s excellent play down the stretch, he beat himself up after the game for passing out a wide-open dunk late in the game in an attempt to chase his first triple-double — something he said he apologized for offered to his teammates. , and which he followed up by hitting a pair of three-pointers to officially put away the pesky 76ers.

“I’m not going to lie,” Mitchell said with a sheepish smile. “It’s been eight years. I mean, if there’s any indication, I passed a wide open dunk. That’s out of character, it’s not me. That’s why I didn’t get it. You don’t get rewarded for not being yourself.

“It was a selfish moment. We all have those moments, but I apologize to Cav fans, to my teammates. That’s not me. And that’s why I didn’t understand it, because I’m going to do something selfish. It was ‘ I am not selfless, as I have preached myself.”

Mitchell, his coaches and his teammates could all laugh about the moment, though, as it came in great time for the All-Star guard and the night led to the Cavaliers maintaining their undefeated start.

For much of this game, it wasn’t clear that this would happen, as Cleveland struggled against a vastly undermanned 76ers team, which is 2-10 on the season and 14th in the Eastern Conference. Not only were the 76ers without Maxey (hamstring), George and Embiid (both out due to left knee injury management), shortly before the game the team announced that backup center Andre Drummond would also be out due to an illness.

As a result, Philadelphia opened the game against Cleveland’s pair of elite big men, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, with a front line that featured the 6-foot-4 Guerschon Yabusele at center and 6-10 rookie Adem Bona supporting him. And yet the 76ers managed to stay around thanks to another stellar game from rookie guard Jared McCain, who scored a career-high 34 points — the most of any rookie this season — in his first career start.

But in the end, Cleveland’s massive talent advantage won out, as the Cavaliers opened the second half on a 12-5 run to regain the lead and let the margin hover around five points for much of the fourth quarter.

“We had an honest conversation at halftime,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “We showed some clips. They just weren’t feeling us. They ran where they wanted. We didn’t have ball pressure. Our energy was low, our physicality wasn’t great and these guys, they’re a winning group and they picked it up again .”

Still, the Cavaliers see room for improvement. While they are clearly happy with their winning streak, they have escaped in the last ten days with narrow victories over the Chicago Bulls, Brooklyn Nets and the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Milwaukee Bucks. In many ways it’s a perfect situation: keep winning games while also identifying things you need to work on.

And they do this while continuing to widen the gap between themselves and the rest of the Eastern Conference. Only three weeks into the season, Cleveland already has a six-game lead in the loss column over everyone except the defending champion Boston Celtics, who they face on Tuesday when they can be 15-0.

But for a team hoping to move into the realm of true championship contention this season, it will have to adjust to life as a club that gets the opponent’s best shot every night – something Mitchell said he is glad his side get the chance to experience this, even while we know there is still a long way to go before real testing begins next spring.

“That’s what you want,” Mitchell said. “If you want to be the best, at the end of the day you have to beat the best. But to be the best, and we’re trying to stay that way, you have to go out there every night. And it’s a mental thing. How great do you want to be ?We are in the hunt, but it is also November. I am not winning a championship at the moment. But these are good tests.

“The fact that we’re 13-0 is great. We could be 9-2. It doesn’t really matter to me. I think the most important thing is how we can just continue to build the habits by every team the best chance.” from night to night.”