Donovan Mitchell didn’t need much more than one line to explain why he stayed put in Cleveland.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Mitchell said Monday at Cavaliers media day after signing a four-year, $273 million maximum contract extension. “I was just talking to one of the radio guys about it and they were like, 'Why do you think people didn't believe you?'
I said a lot of that probably predates me. There are a lot of things that have happened beforehand.
For me, I get it. I'm not offended by those things, but for me, showing is better than telling.
I'm here.”
That message came after a season in which the Cavaliers kept showing Mitchell exactly what they thought of him. Cleveland brought him in from the Utah Jazz before the 2022-23 season, and he has delivered ever since, averaging 26.7 points per game in the regular season and 27.3 points per game in the playoffs in a Cavaliers uniform.
Mitchell, a seven-time All-Star, helped push Cleveland to the Eastern Conference Finals last season. It was the franchise’s first trip there since 1992 without LeBron James. The run ended with a sweep at the hands of the New York Knicks, but the front office still backed Mitchell with the massive extension this offseason.
The numbers tell the rest of the story. Mitchell enters this season with career averages of 25.1 points per game in the regular season and 27.8 points per game in the playoffs across his time with the Jazz and Cavaliers. He’s already one of the top scorers in NBA history, and Cleveland is betting on more big nights ahead.
The Cavaliers open the season against LeBron and the 76ers in Philadelphia, a matchup that should bring plenty of electricity. It would have been a different kind of headline if James had returned home to play alongside Mitchell, but instead he signed a two-year, $8 million deal to join Maxey, Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid in Philadelphia. The 76ers also added former Cavaliers wing Dean Wade.
James still casts a giant shadow over everything in Cleveland. He is the best player in Cavaliers history and, by the source’s framing, arguably the best player of all time.
He leads NBA history in points, field goals, games and minutes, is the only player to rank top five all-time in points and assists, and the only one to win three Finals MVPs with three teams. He also owns the lone 40,000-point, 10,000-rebound, 10,000-assist line and the only 50,000-point total when regular season and playoffs are combined.
His Cleveland résumé remains loaded too: 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.5 steals and 0.7 blocks per game, along with four MVPs, four championships, four Finals MVPs, one scoring title and one assists title.
Mitchell now gets his own chance to chase something that still hangs over the franchise. The 2015-16 Cavaliers beat the 73-9 Golden State Warriors for the 2016 championship, and Mitchell will try to do what LeBron did in 2016.
There’s also a little long-term faith baked into the organization’s view of him. Cleveland will retire LeBron’s No. 23 jersey one day, and president of basketball operations Koby Altman has said the franchise hopes to retire Mitchell’s No. 45 as well.
The Cavaliers also added another major piece after LeBron went to the 76ers, landing Peyton Watson in a sign-and-trade with the Denver Nuggets. Watson agreed to a four-year, $88 million deal that includes a player option and a trade kicker. Last season with Denver, he averaged 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists while shooting 49.1% from the field, 41.1% from three and 73.0% from the line.
Watson enters this season with career averages of 8.7 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists, and James Harden recruited him to the Cavaliers.
On paper, Cleveland’s lineup looks loaded.
In Other News...
Evan Mobley Debate Just Got Uncomfortable For The Cavs
A speculative Evan Mobley-for-Matas Buzelis trade idea has surfaced in the kind of offseason chatter that always lands a little harder when it involves a cornerstone player. For Cleveland, the premise is uncomfortable because Mobley remains one of the leagues most valuable young defenders, the sort of player who changes the floor on that end even when the offense is still evolving. For Chicago, Buzelis is the more theoretical piece, a young forward whose appeal rests on the belief that his scoring upside can keep growing into something bigger.
The debate gets interesting because both sides can talk themselves into the basketball fit, even if the idea lives entirely in hypotheticals. Cleveland would be weighing whether to move off a proven defensive anchor for a higher-variance offensive swing, while the Bulls would be asking how much patience they have for Buzelis to reach his ceiling. Nothing about this points to real negotiations, but it is the kind of thought experiment that exposes just how delicate the balance is when a team starts wondering whether its best long-term answer is already in hand. [Read more 🡒]
Three Young Cavs Suddenly Have A Real Shot To Matter
Craig Porter Jr., Tyrese Proctor and reserve forward Jaylon Tyson are all at a stage where the Cavaliers can still reasonably imagine more coming from them. For a team trying to keep building around established pieces, young depth matters, and Cleveland has a few players who fit the kind of long-view conversation coaches and front offices like to have in-season. The appeal here is not just age, but the chance that each can sharpen a specific part of his game enough to stop being a developmental name and start becoming a dependable rotation option.
Proctor has already drawn some attention from Kenny Atkinson, who recently pointed to the guards physical development as part of his progress, and that only adds to the sense that his timeline is moving in the right direction. Porter and Tyson, meanwhile, are still in the category of players whose next step could come from simple but important growth, including greater shooting aggression and more consistency. None of it is finished, but for Cleveland, the possibility that a few young players might meaningfully matter by 2026-27 is the kind of internal upside that can shape a roster more than any outside rumor. [Read more 🡒]
LeBrons Latest Health Concern Changes Clevelands Biggest What-If
LeBron James latest health update has added another layer to the long-running conversation about what might have been in Cleveland. After leaving for Philadelphia for what is expected to be the final two seasons of his career, James is now dealing with chronic arthritis in his left foot and lower-back issues, according to an ESPN report. It is the kind of news that resonates far beyond his current team, because for Cavaliers fans it brings back the familiar mix of admiration and regret that has followed every twist in his late-career arc.
James reportedly monitors the problems daily as part of his training, and last season he missed about a month because of sciatica. For Philadelphia, the concern is obvious: availability always shapes everything around a player at this stage, from rhythm to lineup stability to the larger ceiling of the season. For Cleveland, it only sharpens the old question of how different things might have looked if this version of James, with all the wear and tear that comes with the miles, had been part of the present instead of another teams future. [Read more 🡒]