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Tag: Donovan Mitchell

Justin Rowan: Donovan Mitchell Provides “Massive Boost for the Cavs”

Present MVP candidate Donovan Mitchell is converting shots at career-best levels in Year 1 in Cleveland (@Cavs/Instagram).

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After an 8-1 start to the season that had some prognosticators pegging them as dark-horse title contenders, the Cleveland Cavaliers have been hit with the On the NBA Beat curse and have lost their last four games. To help us get into the ins-and-outs of this enigmatic team, we’ve brought on Cavaliers expert and longtime friend of the show Justin Rowan, host of The Chase Down Podcast. Justin takes us through what the offseason trade for Donovan Mitchell unlocks for Cleveland, the growth trajectory of young stars Darius Garland and Evan Mobley and how he projects the Cavs to compare to the other members of the Eastern Conference elite this season and beyond.

4:45-5:39: “I think the floor of what you’re hoping for is to avoid the play-in tournament. But I think they have more than enough talent to get home court in the first round, and that should be the goal. If you’re talking about translating that to the postseason, I’m always going to give the benefit of the doubt to the teams that have been there. Experience matters so much … so I’m going to give the edge to teams like Milwaukee and Boston when it comes to the playoffs, but in the regular season I do think they are up in that tier.”

7:11-7:56: “The biggest difference from Donovan Mitchell and what the Cavs probably would have been pre-Mitchell trade is Mitchell kind of combines a lot of what you were looking for from multiple players. Collin Sexton is a good scorer. He’s a very good scorer, and I think his passing maybe was a little underrated, but it’s not at the same level as Mitchell. A lot of the actions that they were probably planning on running for Ochai Agbaji, like pin-downs and all that kind of stuff, you can run for Mitchell, but you also have the added benefit of his playmaking, the volume 3-point shooting, the improvement on defense, which I think was one of the things they were banking on prior to that trade. The fact that he brings all of those elements into one player is a massive boost for the Cavs.”

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“Built to Lose” Book Special With Jake Fischer

Jake Fischer’s “Built to Lose” chronicles the league’s “Tanking Era” with a focus on the 76ers, Suns, Magic, Kings and Lakers.


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Enjoy Aaron’s one-on-one conversation with Bleacher Report writer Jake Fischer on his debut book, “Built to Lose: How the NBA’s Tanking Era Changed the League Forever.”

4:47-5:23: “There was a long Google doc of probably 600 names of people that were this player and his agent and the player’s college coach and every single guy who was ever rostered by that team, guys who were in training camp. And then as you get on the phone with other people, you start to ask also, like, ‘Hey, now that we’ve talked for 20, 30, 40 minutes, and you kind of know who I am a little bit, know the work I’m trying to do, and just the honest conversation I’m trying to have, anybody you think you could put me in touch with that would help me further understand, add another perspective?’ Sometimes I’ll even ask for specific people.”     

14:38-15:47: “For me, before I got into this more newsy space at Bleacher Report, at Sports Illustrated, I was working on “Built to Lose” for a long portion of my time there. I kinda developed a niche at SI of being someone who covered left-of-center stories, like I got coffee with Mike D’Antoni ‘cuz he’s obsessed with Starbucks. And my last thing I ever wrote for SI was a profile on Red Panda, so stuff like that. Continue reading

Sarah Todd on Jazz: “It’s Not About the Regular Season Anymore”

Donovan Mitchell has improved his scoring and efficiency every season he’s been in the league, yet his team has not made a conference final. Now, year 5 awaits (Instagram/@UtahJazz).


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Sarah Todd, Utah Jazz beat reporter for the Deseret News and host of the Unsalvageable podcast, sheds light on last season’s best regular-season team. How can the Jazz take their pre-playoff success and parlay it into a deep postseason run?

4:48-6:28: “I think it all has to do with versatility and health. Because if Mike Conley is healthy through the Clippers series, if Donovan Mitchell doesn’t have a bum ankle, then maybe the Clippers’ offense isn’t able to break the point of attack as easily as it was able to, which then causes problems on the switch, which is what caused so many problems for Gobert on the defensive side. It wasn’t that he wasn’t good; it was just that the perimeter gave him too much to deal with because they weren’t holding guys out. … Other teams have been exploiting that flaw of the Jazz’s for years. … As far as versatility goes, that’s what they tried to address in the offseason. They got Rudy Gay and Eric Paschall, both guys that can play small-ball 5 and can switch 1 through 5, are versatile defenders.”

12:50-13:06: “They saw firsthand last season how important health is once you are in the postseason and how much it can change things in a really drastic way. And so, in talking with some of these players over the last couple of weeks, they are more open to the idea of resting.” Continue reading

Brad Botkin Previews West: Spurs “Not Good Enough” for Playoffs

Gregg Popovich and the Spurs have appeared in the postseason for 21 consecutive seasons, but guest Brad Botkin doesn’t see a 22nd straight trip in their future (Mike/Wikimedia Commons).


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Brad Botkin, senior NBA writer for CBS Sports and co-author of Olympic gold medalist Dan O’ Brien’s memoir, “Clearing Hurdles,” has strong opinions about this season’s Western Conference, and he’s unafraid to share them. For example, despite the Spurs’ 21 consecutive playoff appearances, Brad is adamant San Antonio’s streak will come to a close this season.

Timing will vary due to dynamic advertising, but here are the approximate time stamps of some of our favorite clips (so many good ones to choose from):

7:06-7:28: “I’ve heard a lot of people say, ‘Well that’s how Kobe led. That’s how Jordan led. He forced the best out of his guys.’ Listen, come talk to me when Jimmy Butler is Kobe or Jordan. Jimmy Butler is not the kind of guy that singlehandedly transforms your team. He certainly makes the Timberwolves better. They’re in no way a championship contender with him, nor do I think any team is a championship contender with him as a best player.”

14:42-15:15: “All these big-picture numbers about the Rockets, they’re going to look great on paper. Look, [in] playoff games, certainly against the Warriors, if they match up, or the Jazz, if they’re in a Game 6 and there’s three minutes left in the game, I don’t care what you did all year long. Continue reading

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