How Pickup Games In Utah Showed Cavs' Sam Merrill NBA Was A Possibility

When Sam Merrill was in college at Utah State, now-Cleveland Cavaliers teammates Donovan Mitchell and Georges Niang were playing for the Jazz.

Aside from an injury that spoiled the end of it for him and the Cleveland Cavaliers as a team, Sam Merrill's week couldn't have gone much better. 

It started with a nine-points-in-eight-minutes stint against the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday, continued with a clutch 19-point performance on Monday night vs. the Houston Rockets and carried into a career night opposite his hometown Utah Jazz, dropping 27 points on eight threes for the wine-and-gold.

The story can't write itself much more than that. What's even more ironic? Donovan Mitchell and Georges Niang saw this coming a while ago. When Merrill was going into his junior year of college at Utah State in the summer of 2018, the two were coming off their first season with the Jazz. 

So, being only an hour-and-a-half south of campus, Mitchell and Niang (along with Royce O'Neale) played a few pickup games with Merrill to get reps in and compete.

"We went up to Utah State. Sam was doing a lot of the same Sam things up at Utah State that he does in Cleveland," Niang said Wednesday. "He could always shoot it. He's done a tremendous job in this league. You just put your head down and wait for your break to come and it's so rewarding for guys that get their break and I think rewarding for guys like me to see guys how hard they work and they get their break and it's actually really cool to see because he deserves it."

"I've known him for a little bit and this is what he does," Mitchell added after Monday's win and Merrill's initial breakout night. "He puts in a tremendous amount of work. I don't know if he'll like me saying this, but he's like cursing himself out because he's missing one and two in a row. He's that detailed and that focused on his craft."

Merrill admitted in his latest press conference that growing up as a basketball player in Utah, he was just hoping to play Division I basketball. He accomplished that with the Aggies. 

But getting some 5-on-5 action in with Mitchell and Niang at the time might've helped him aim a little higher than that.

"I think that was about the time where I felt like [the NBA] was a possibility," Merrill said. "It was fun playing with high-level guys, and I was starting to make some real strides as a player. So it's funny how that's six, seven years ago now, but it's kind of come full circle.”

Oct 31, 2023; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers guard Sam Merrill (5) shoots in the fourth quarter against the New York Knicks at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse / David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

Battling a sore right wrist that had him listed as questionable prior to Thursday's meeting with the New Orleans Pelicans, Merrill was unable to play in the second half after missing his first four shots from the field in 12 minutes.

That still doesn't take away from a week that literally made Merrill's dream come true.

Fate's a funny thing, isn't it?