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Tag: JB Bickerstaff

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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Zach Weiss on Cavs: “We Are Real”

Jarrett Allen was left of the Eastern Conference All-Star team, but he is having one hell of a year and is coming off consecutive double-doubles, including a 29-point, 22-rebound effort against the Hornets last Friday (Instagram/@Cavs).


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Zach Weiss, host of the Across the Cavs podcast, is back to provide Loren an update, and boy, is it an exciting one! As the Cavaliers ready to host the 2022 NBA All-Star game, they just received word that Darius Garland will be playing in the showcase event for the first time. On the heels of an 11-4 January, Cleveland is still playing excellent basketball, yet not satisfied with its roster. In fact, one-third of the way through this very interview, Zach learned in real time that Caris LeVert was on his way to Cleveland to improve the already talented squad. Among other topics, Zach opines on the acquisition, the Cavaliers’ postseason chances and why their three-7-footer lineup has worked so well.

2:55-3:01 – “Garland’s All-Star selection basically says, ‘Yeah, we’re hosting the game. We’ve got players in the game. We are real!’

14:39-14:55 – “Justin Rowan of the Chase Down [podcast] – we had him on Thursday of last week; this would be February 3. He was big on Caris LeVert, who proceeded to drop 42 points, including 20 on just one miss in the first quarter in Indy’s last game, so he’s an option as well.” (Not even two and a half minutes later, Zach learns that the Cavaliers did indeed acquire LeVert, so be sure to listen to his excited, real-time reaction from 17:29-17:51.) Continue reading

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