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Donovan Mitchell played his first game in Utah as a visitor Tuesday night, dropping 46 points in a loss to his former team. It was just the latest offensive explosion from the All-Star guard who scored 71 points just three games earlier.
By all accounts, Cleveland’s trade for Mitchell has worked out. At 26-16, the Cavs are in sixth place in the Eastern Conference with just 3 1/2 games between them and first place. Mitchell is leading the way with career highs in scoring, shooting and defensive box plus/minus. His 29.3 scoring average ranks seventh in the NBA. He’s sixth on my latest MVP ladder.
But did you know the Cavs are only two games better than where they were at this point last season?
It sounds kind of wild now, knowing they didn’t make the playoffs, but the Cavs were 24-18 and sixth in the East after 42 games last year. They eventually bottomed out due to injuries, but this team was already really good.
That’s part of why the Jazz are better than anyone anticipated after getting Lauri Markkanen back in the deal for Mitchell — Markkanen scored 25 in the Tuesday’s win. It’s also why we won’t know the true value Mitchell adds to Cleveland until the playoffs come around.
The Cavs didn’t bring him in to make the playoffs. They brought him in to win in the playoffs. Mitchell’s ability to score in isolation becomes so much more important when rotations shrink and defensive game-plans are more acute. What he’s doing in the regular season is awesome, but it’s not enough to crown a team as winners in a deal that required them to part with three first-round picks and agree to swap two others.
We probably won’t know who won the Donovan Mitchell trade for several years.
— Prince J. Grimes
The Tip-Off
Some NBA goodness from around the USA TODAY Sports network.
Utah also traded big man Rudy Gobert in the offseason, and one of the players they got back in the deal was rookie Walker Kessler.
In Tuesday’s game, Kessler was doing something so bizarre on defense that Donovan Mitchell had to pull him aside after the game to tell him stop. So what was it?
Kessler was calling out his own defensive strategy, tipping off the offense enough to put himself at a disadvantage. My colleague Bryan Kalbrosky wrote about why it’s so shocking:
“Mitchell described what Kessler did as giving him the answers to the test before he got a chance to even take it. Perhaps that is why he was easily able to score against Utah even despite a massive height disadvantage.
It is pretty shocking that Kessler has presumably called out his plays all season and has remained as effective as he has, recording one of the highest block percentages we’ve ever seen from a rookie. One can only imagine how much more effective he can be if he implements Mitchell’s advice.”
Yeah, you probably don’t want to give a scorer like Mitchell any added advantages.
One to Watch
(All odds via Tipico.)
Phoenix Suns (+700) at Denver Nuggets (-13.5, -1000), O/U 226.5, 10 PM ET
This might be the easiest pick I make all year, but let me lay it out for you: The Suns are playing on the second night of a back-to-back, without Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton and several other key players from their rotation, on the road, against the best team in the Western Conference. Denver is going to cover this spread with ease.
Shootaround
— Our guy BK re-ranked the best players under 23 years old, and there’s a new No. 1
— Shaq was supposed to eat a frog after TCU’s loss, but he chickened out
— Former Lakers guard Smush Parker is working to become an NBA referee
— Ja Morant is trying to help a child whose autographed basketball was stolen at a Grizzlies game
