Megadeal for Donovan Mitchell
The Cleveland Cavaliers acquired Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell in a mega trade.
The Jazz will receive Lauri Markkanen, Ochai Agbaji, Collin Sexton, three unprotected first-round picks and two draft picks in the transaction.
What is the impact of this mega-deal for the Jazz and for the Cavs? Are the Knicks, who were interested in Mitchell, the big losers?
1- Why is the trade good for the Jazz?
Rebuilding is not usually the most coveted word in the NBA. However, when a team spends several seasons betting on not only being a contender but having a chance to win a title and it doesn’t even come close, it tends to become an obsession.
Danny Ainge, the franchise’s strongman, has set the ship in the direction of building from the ground up a new team. In a short space of time, he turned his top two stars like Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert into 7 first round draft picks (with 3 trade possibilities) and 9 players.
It is clear that Ainge is taking a gamble on the future with Collin Sexton ($72 million for the next 4 years), while he will try to keep looking for trades for his veteran players like Mike Conley, Bojan Bogdanovic, Jordan Clarkson and Rudy Gay.
For the time being, he has a good base of young players (10 of them are 25 years old or younger) on which to start building the new team in the coming years. But above all, he will have 15 first-round picks between 2023 and 2029.
Danny Ainge already knew how to rebuild the Boston Celtics after trading Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. That time he did it by accumulating draft picks that helped him both to make trades (Kyrie Irving) and to add talent through the draft (Jason Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart) and attract free agents.
He already knows the recipe for rebuilding and will try to repeat it in Utah. We’ll have to see if the Jazz return to sounding fine-tuned and exquisite as they once did. But without a doubt, this change is in complete harmony with the plan the franchise decided to execute.
2- Why is the trade good for the Cavs?
It is good because the franchise gets an All-Star player already more than contrasted, young but with experience, even Playoffs, who rarely gets injured and who maintains regularity in every game, while the three first-round picks in exchange for which the Jazz sent him to Cleveland are a ‘flyer’, can pay off or be just another anecdote in the NBA.
Donovan will also join a roster that in recent seasons has been built not around a player, but around the franchise itself. The former Utah star will have as teammates young players with a great future such as Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, Isaac Okoro or Jarrett Allen, to name a few, but he will also be able to continue learning from people like Kevin Love, Rajon Rondo or Ricky Rubio.
With their addition, the Cavs look on paper as a team well grounded in their first two units and with a range of possibilities for coach Bickerstaff (Coach of the Year candidate last season), to move his pieces at will and the Ohioans return to the Playoffs, instance in which they do not appear since 2016.
3- True or false: the Knicks are the big losers of the turnaround.
True. The Knicks have been looking for a superstar to lead the team since the departure of Carmelo Anthony, and they seemed to have everything in place to grab the Jazz point guard and bring him back home in what would have been a move celebrated by ‘Big Apple’ fans. Mitchell, 25, a three-time All-Star and New York native, would instantly become the franchise’s best player, the cornerstone in their return to serious competition.
Instead, the Knicks head into the campaign on the heels of a series of solid moves in the offseason, such as the signing of Jalen Brunson (though the extension to RJ Barrett may be questionable), that puts them on a good path, but without the star that would have made a difference on and off the court to the delight of their fans. More than anything it seems like a huge missed opportunity in New York.
