Firsts are funny. You only get one. And when it’s over, it’s over. There are no do-overs, no rewrites. For Cleveland Cavaliers guard Ty Jerome, no do-overs or rewrites were needed. That’s because Jerome didn’t just seize his first playoff game for the Cavs. He mugged it, stripped it down, and made it his own.
Under the heavy lights and smothering playoff atmosphere of Rocket Arena, Jerome didn’t just show up. He took over. With twenty-eight points, including sixteen in the fourth quarter alone, Jerome detonated the Miami Heat’s defense like a stick of dynamite, capping a final score of 121-100 and the Cavs getting the first win in this series.
For most guys, a playoff debut is a stage too big, a moment too loud. For Jerome? It looked like he was born for it. Donovan Mitchell said it best at the postgame podium, half-laughing, half-incredulous.
“It damn sure didn’t look like it,” Mitchell mused.
Jerome’s 28 points are the third-most ever by a Cavs player making his postseason debut, right behind LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. Only Jerome wasn’t a #1 pick or a teenage phenom. He’s a man on a mission, doing his damndest to remind everyone why they shouldn’t have forgotten about him.
A year ago, Jerome was nowhere. Fifteen minutes into his Cleveland tenure, he went down, suffering a season-ending ankle surgery and a stretch full of surgeries, doubts, and dark thoughts. He watched helplessly as the Cavs stumbled through last year’s playoffs, wondering if he’d even get his shot.
When you have all that time off, kind of sitting there, you have time to reflect and do mental work and see what you need to improve on,” Jerome admitted. “Like confidence and aggression were the things for me.”
With Jerome taking a backseat last season, it’s understandable that he might have been an afterthought heading into this season. However, for his teammates, Jerome was going to make his presence known well before the season even began.
Long before the regular season tipped off, the Cavs were hosting player-run practices, and there was a constant voice bouncing off the walls with trash talk, trash talk, and more trash talk. It was Jerome, busting guys up off the dribble, burying logo threes, talking recklessly while still finding confidence in his surgically-repaired ankle.
However, for Jerome he didn’t care. He hadn’t played in a year and was letting his pent-up frustration out.
“Slow down, buddy,” Darius Garland said when asked for his initial reaction to Jerome’s mouthiness. “He was talking his (expletive) and he was backing it up, so you can’t really say nothin’ to him.”
That energy, once a curiosity, has become contagious. It’s why Kenny Atkinson calls Jerome’s belief in himself “a running joke — but in the best way.” The Cavs aren’t laughing anymore. They’re riding it.
Against Miami, Jerome drained a pull-up three on his first attempt, then boldly pulled up from a step inside the logo seconds later. He missed that heat check, but it didn’t matter. In the fourth quarter, when the Heat trimmed Cleveland’s lead to seven and tension filled the building, Jerome was the spark.
He answered Miami’s push with a deafening three-pointer, flexed at defenders with the “too small” gesture, barked at the Heat bench, and pointed to fans in the sellout crowd that included his entire family. In one frenzied stretch, he accounted for 16 straight Cavs points, each more absurd than the last.
