How Donovan Mitchell Has Shockingly Turned the Cavs Into Contenders

There are arguments against a deep playoff run for Cleveland, but the young team has put in the work and believes it should be taken seriously.

Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports

Are the Cavaliers contenders?

It’s officially time to ask.

It’s mid-March. The Cavs have 43 wins. They lead the NBA in defensive rating. They allow the fewest points per game. They have an offense led by a dynamic, All-NBA guard who is supported by a pair of All-Stars from last season. They have an athletic, second-year big man who has drawn comparisons to Anthony Davis—and plays more and more like him by the game.

They have more wins than Memphis, Golden State and both Los Angeles teams.

They are contenders.

Right?

The argument against a deep playoff run in Cleveland is simple. Too young. Too inexperienced. Have not taken their lumps. The Cavs have 317 games of combined postseason experience. Nice, right? Well 165 of them belong to Danny Green. Donovan Mitchell (39 games) is tested. Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Isaac Okoro are not.

“At the end of the day, you have to experience it,” says Mitchell. “You have to feel it. You can’t really describe the playoffs until you’re there.”

Reasons to believe in the Cavs begin with Mitchell. He’s averaging 27.6 points per game while posting the most efficient shooting (47.8%) and three-point shooting (38.3%) numbers of his career. He ranks in the top 10 in fourth-quarter scoring. Fears that Mitchell might weaken one of the NBA’s top defenses last season have been unfounded.

“We have guys who take pride in being a good defensive team,” says J.B. Bickerstaff. “Donovan is one of them.”

Mitchell wasn’t a good defender last season. He knows it. Admits it. Is fueled by it. He rewatched Utah’s first-round series loss to Dallas. A few times. He saw the lazy close-outs. How he was a step slow as a perimeter defender. When the Jazz traded Mitchell to Cleveland last summer, he scrolled through social media skepticism about his ability to fit in.

“You can stay off your phone as much as you want,” says Mitchell. “But you hear it.”

Getting better wasn’t the goal. It was to get back to who he was. Mitchell was a defender in college. “I wasn’t a scorer,” says Mitchell. “I wasn’t some dynamic dude. I got drafted because of defense.”

In Utah, he got away from it. Some of that was on him. “At the end of the day, I didn’t play well,” says Mitchell. Some of that was being part of a team that was quickly approaching its expiration date.

“After a while it became the same,” says Mitchell. “Everything becomes the same. And I don’t mean the guys. I loved the guys. I loved my teammates. But you have to allow, when you make the playoffs every year it becomes an expectation. And then the losses, they’re the toughest part.

“Wins are like ‘Oh, you're supposed to do that.’ But when you lose it’s a big deal. We were so talented, [and] there were different things we didn’t accomplish. … Things didn’t go well, but I appreciate it because it’s helped me grow to be the player that I know I can be.”

On a team that needed him. Last summer, Garland knew the Cavs would be in the market for another scorer. In Miami, he worked out with Mitchell. “In my head I was thinking, ‘If we had another scoring guard like this, we’d have a crazy backcourt,’” recalls Garland. Weeks later, they did. The two clicked instantly.

“It wasn’t really my turn, your turn at any time of the year,” says Garland. “It was really just, ‘Let’s just work it out. Let’s just try to move the ball as much as we can and just figure it from there.’ That's what it's really been. Me and Don just trying to work off each other. Reading the defense, how they are playing both of us. Try to get our brains involved because they’re so powerful for us as well.”

As an opposing coach, Bickerstaff knew Mitchell was good.

Just not this good.

“When you watch [Mitchell] and you prepare for him, you see him as a scorer,” says Bickerstaff. “In reality he is a lead guard. He has the ability to orchestrate, he has the ability to play-make, he has the empathy to understand what his teammates need and the ability to put them in position to be successful. He's not a combo guard or a two guard. He is a point guard with the ability to score the basketball at a high level.

“The way he thinks [about] the game, it’s both sides of the floor. It’s not just an offensive thing, but he has a great eye for understanding what his opponent is trying to do. And then he has a way of dissecting that to create an advantage for us. And I think he’s able to see it on the fly. It’s not an, ‘Oh, shoot, I went home and watched the film and saw what they were doing.’ It’s a, ‘This is what they're doing right now. This is how quickly I can shift and make them pay.’”

Mitchell sees the youth in Cleveland’s locker room. But he also sees the potential. In Mobley, a 21-year-old big man equally adept at contesting shots on the perimeter as he is at the rim. In Jarrett Allen, a reliable double-double threat. In Dean Wade, who made Kevin Love expendable. In Okoro, Caris LeVert and Cedi Osman, who each bring something different to the wing.

“I believe in these guys,” says Mitchell. “I believe these guys are ready for the moment.”

But are they? History suggests teams like the Cavs have a learning curve, one that includes disappointment in a first playoff run. Oklahoma City in 2010. Milwaukee in ’17 and ’18. Cleveland can win a first-round series—the Knicks and Nets, currently jockeying for the fifth position, are both flawed—but conventional wisdom says that is the Cavaliers’ ceiling.

Or is it? The Cavs are 3–1 against Boston. They have a win against Milwaukee. They have split two games against Philadelphia, with a rubber match looming Wednesday night. Mitchell isn’t into making predictions. “You got to get there and see it,” he says. But he isn’t calling this a developmental year, either. “We’ve put the work in,” Mitchell adds. “It’s tough going from the hunter last year to the hunted. But you see the progression. That tells you the mindset is there. That tells you this team believes.”

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