Trading For Donovan Mitchell Was A Move Cleveland Had To Make
Small-market teams in the NBA always get overshadowed when it comes to having their highlights shown on national television and more importantly, being able to attract big name free agents.
This is not to say that these types of teams do not make big acquisitions in free agency, but we tend to always hear a lot about the teams in New York and California over others simply because the big markets control professional sports.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the small-market teams in the NBA and the only reason they have been in the news over the last decade or so is because of LeBron James, arguably the NBA’s most marketable player since Michael Jordan.
In their 53 years as an NBA franchise, the Cavaliers have never really been a successful organization and since LeBron James came into the league in 2003, Cleveland has put together a winning record just once without him on their roster.
This came during the 2021-22 season, a year in which Cleveland really took a big step as a rebuilding franchise and began a new chapter in their team’s lore.
Looking at the Cavaliers right now ahead of the 2022-23 season, they are a young, hungry team that has plenty of depth on their roster led by All-Star talents that are under 25-years-old. Darius Garland (22) and Jarrett Allen (24) were both first time All-Stars during the 2021-22 season and last year’s third overall pick Evan Mobley finished second in the NBA’s Rookie of the Year voting, putting his All-Star potential on full display.
Oh, and we cannot forget to mention that the Cavaliers recently made a massive move by trading for 25-year-old All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell, who many believed was going to be traded to the New York Knicks. Almost nobody had Cleveland as Mitchell’s landing spot on their “NBA Bingo card,” yet here we are talking about a young, small-market team in the Cleveland Cavaliers that have all of a sudden turned their rebuilding roster into a contending one.
Since LeBron James departed Cleveland for the second time in his career in 2018, this organization has been searching for ways to build their team through the draft given that almost no high-level talents have wanted to sign with the Cavs in free agency.
Cavaliers President of Basketball Operations, Koby Altman, has done a fantastic job of assembling assets through the years and this offseason presented a huge chance for immediate growth for this franchise. When the Utah Jazz made Mitchell available in trade talks, Cleveland was looked at as an afterthought at first by many around the league, but as time went on, what they were offering began to look more and more enticing for the Jazz.
Collin Sexton, Lauri Markkanen and Ochai Agbaji are all young, high-potential talents that Utah now gets their hands on and the Jazz also ended up acquiring five total draft assets from Cleveland: three unprotected first-round picks and two pick swaps from 2025-2029.
So why did the Cavaliers make this trade then if it meant giving up a large chunk of their future, especially from a player perspective?
Entering this offseason, Collin Sexton was set to be a restricted free agent after he and the Cavs could not come to an agreement on a new contract extension before the start of the 2021-22 season. At the start of preliminary contract talks, both sides were far apart on the AAV (annual average value) of Sexton’s new possible extension and this continued well into August.
With Sexton wanting at least $16 million in AAV on a new contract and the Cavs not wanting to pay him more than $12 million on a smaller deal due to the fact that he was coming off of a meniscus injury that kept him sidelined almost all of last season, moving him for value made the most sense.
Donovan Mitchell is a three-time All-Star and a much better option for the Cavaliers at the shooting guard position that just so happens to be only two years older than Collin Sexton. If there was one player in the league that made the most sense for Cleveland to replace Sexton with, it was Mitchell and they did that this offseason.
Lauri Markkanen’s contributions are also replaceable for this team given that they have Isaac Okoro, Dean Wade and Kevin Love. Ochai Agbaji is a rookie with a lot of promise, but he is a rookie that has not played in the league at all yet.
Trading for Donovan Mitchell was a move that the Cavaliers needed to make and now, they not only look like a contending team heading into the 2022-23 season, but a team that could be extremely competitive in the Eastern Conference for the next several years.
Mitchell, Garland, Mobley and Allen are all under contract through the 2024-25 season and it is quite possible that the Cavaliers will wind up keeping all four players for much longer than the next three seasons.
Opportunities for growth do not come around often for small-market teams, which is why Koby Altman and his front-office took a chance on what could wind up being the best move ever made in franchise history.
The Cavaliers have arguably a Top-5 backcourt in the league, they have a Top-5 frontcourt in the league and they have some tremendous depth on their bench with Caris LeVert, Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio when he is healthy. If there is one “dark-horse” team in the NBA this season that could wind up making an unexpected run to the Conference Finals or NBA Finals, it is the Cleveland Cavaliers.