Your Cleveland Cavaliers are Eastern Conference Finalists for the first time since 2018.

State of play: Brutalized and left for dead at Rocket Arena in Game 6, Donovan Mitchell and the Cavs came storming back against the Pistons, winning Game 7 Sunday night in decisive fashion (125-94) to take the series 4-3.

The intrigue: After exhausting back-to-back seven-game series, the Cavs now travel to New York to take on a Knicks team that hasn't played since May 10.

Between the lines: Mitchell has never advanced to the conference finals and played selfish, inefficient basketball through much of the Detroit series.

• But he silenced his critics Sunday, scoring 26 points and dishing out 8 assists in his most dominant all-around performance of this postseason.

By the numbers: Big men Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley scored more than 20 points apiece, while producing an array of highlight-reel blocks and dunks.

• Sam Merrill led all bench scorers with 23 points, shooting 5-8 from behind the three-point line.

Zoom in: Cavs owner Dan Gilbert bused an armada of Cleveland fans to Little Caesars Arena, and their cheers could be heard on the national telecast.

• Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne was among them.

🎙️ What they're saying: Amazon Prime play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle coined a couple of instant-classic calls:

• "A Spida bite at the end of the quarter!" he announced, to commemorate a Mitchell buzzer beater.
• "As the Fro flies!" he exclaimed after a high-flying Allen dunk.

💭 Sam's thought bubble: I was at Game 6 Friday and left Rocket Arena utterly demoralized. I assumed I was watching the end of an era of Cavaliers basketball.

• Sunday, I saw a team transformed — electrifying on both ends of the floor.
• After the stifling defenses of Toronto and Detroit, New York may actually seem like a walk in the park.

What's next: The Eastern Conference Finals begins Tuesday evening at Madison Square Garden.

The state of Ohio provided more than $550 million in sales tax breaks for data centers in 2024, per a new report from News 5.

Why it matters: The scale of these incentives reflects a staggering uptick in data center construction.

• State officials originally expected Ohio to surrender only about $130 million in sales tax revenue for data centers.

The latest: Last week, the city of Cleveland rejected a permit application to build a $1.6 billion hyperscale data center in Slavic Village.

• That decision comes as Cleveland City Council considers legislation imposing a moratorium on new data center construction.

What they're saying: Mayor Justin Bibb addressed resident concerns in a social media post on the topic last week.

• "We are doing the work right now to ensure we have strong policies and real safeguards in place to protect our environment and address rising utility costs," he said.
• "We're gonna be transparent about it. We're gonna be accountable. And I'm going to keep you in the loop every step of the way."

Zoom out: At least 18 Ohio communities have enacted or considered temporary moratoriums to pause data center development, the Ohio Newsroom reports.

Go deeper: Ohio's data center surge faces resistance

🚧 ODOT has closed State Route 176 northbound between I-480 and Denison Avenue until June for road repairs. (News 5)

🏃‍♀️ Ashton Swinford of Hudson has been the female winner of the Cleveland Marathon for five consecutive years. (Fox 8)

🚨 Police shut down the Cleveland Asian Festival yesterday afternoon due to overcrowding. (Cleveland.com)

🎭 "The Lost Boys" musical, which recently earned 12 Tony Award nominations, will launch its national tour at Playhouse Square in spring 2028. (WKYC)

Stay off the road Thursday and Friday afternoons if you want to avoid the worst Memorial Day weekend traffic, according to INRIX forecasts.

Why it matters: AAA predicts this will be the busiest Memorial Day ever for travel — meaning your departure time could make or break your trip.

Zoom in: Sunday is a good driving day, per INRIX, a transportation data analytics company that works with AAA to calculate travel times.

By the numbers: AAA anticipates that more than 45 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more over Memorial Day weekend. That's 200,000 more than last year.

• The bulk of them — more than 39 million travelers — will be driving.

What we're watching: Aggressive Monday-morning drivers.

• AAA and Cambridge Mobile Telematics clocked a 29% spike in Memorial Day speeding compared to other Mondays, with speeding peaking 7am–9am.

Go deeper: Ohio drivers face growing pain as gas nears $5 a gallon

This week's photo was taken by Anthony "Goo" Gonzalez (@westside_goo), who captured the Sam Laud freighter on the Cuyahoga River.

📷 If you have a recent photo representing Cleveland's essence, please submit it by replying to this email.