It’s Time to Talk About Donovan Mitchell.

It’s Time to Talk About Donovan Mitchell.

Donovan Mitchell has been having what I would consider to be pretty easily the best season of his career so far and there’s no questioning that it’s had a major impact on Cleveland’s record on the season he’s averaging 28.3 points on 60.3% true shooting along with 5.4

Rebounds and 6.3 assists as well as 1.9 steals a night he’s one of only six players in the NBA recording 285 and five on the season and the other five players that he’s with on that list are all widely considered to be MVP candidates just looking at the box score

Is a pretty simple way of trying to decide who wins MVP but considering how good the Cavs are and how good Donovan Mitchell has been my question is why shouldn’t Donovan Mitchell be in that conversation for MVP now I know that everybody’s going to have their favorite

For the award and I’m not going to sit here and try to argue that Donovan Mitchell should be the favorite for it but given how good he’s been both offensively and defensively and how good the Cavs have been as a whole I find it really difficult to not at the very

Least have him in the discussion we all know that Donovan Mitchell can score the ball with the best of the best in the NBA but this year we’ve seen him have to shoulder a more significant burden as the lead facilitator of the offense with Darius Garland missing some time due to

Injuries Garland’s stretch of M time started after their December 14th loss to Boston since then Mitchell is recording 29 Points five rebounds and 7.3 assists and 1.9 steals per game while shooting 49.3% from the field and 37.7% from three giving him an efficiency of 62.2% true shooting and

The Cavs have only lost five games in that span so how have they been so Unstoppable despite missing two of their main players in Darius Garland and Evan Mobley at had various points over the last couple of months let’s dive into it and find out the big thing that’s

Probably going to jump off the page to a lot of people just glancing at the box score is the fact that Donovan Mitchell is racking up assists more than he ever has and that’s not a coincidence that’s by Design the Cavs are leaning aggressively into the fact that he’s

Going to draw a ton of attention from that backline of Defense when he sets up for a drive or a pick and roll and they use that attention to create wide open shots along the perimeter he’s going to set up for this High pick and roll with

Allen and pay attention to both Anthony black and poo banero both these guys are already sinking in from the perimeter anticipating that roll from Allen and the drive from Mitchell meanwhile Dean Wade is going to be angling for this flare screen on fron for stru and aoro

Is left wide open in the corner so when Mitchell starts to get going downhill and all that defense starts to congregate at the nail aoro is going to have a wide open look from the corner with poo pulled so far away from him the spacing on this play really shows how

Tough it is for defenses when they’re in rotation the Cavs have players all over the perimeter with only Allen inside the arc so when Mitchell attacks this close out off the corner the defense is going to be warped inward with pal anticipating the corner pass and pre-

Rotating but this is going to leave stru open up top and with the defense collapsed Mitchell’s going to feed him for the open shot this scoring threat inside means defenses are almost required to help on drives and when Mitchell’s making the right reads most

Of the time it results in a ton of high quality looks Donovan Mitchell is shooting 68.1% in the restricted area on the season so far and among guards that are attempting a high volume of shots at The Rim he’s been top 10 in efficiency the Synergy that the Cavs are getting

Out of the Mitchell stru auro Wade and Allen lineup is ridiculous and a lot of it is just a byproduct of having a tremendous amount of gravity in the pick and roll between Mitchell and Jared Allen surrounded by three floor spacers and I know that Max stru hasn’t been

Quite the shooter that the Cavs probably would like him to be he’s only shooting around 33% from Beyond The Arc this season but the willingness that he has to shoot and demand a close out is what allows him to still be a positive contributor on the offensive side of

Things in lineups where Mitchell needs spacing to operate and despite the shaky shooting from streu this lineup of Mitchell streu aoro Wade and Allen shoots extremely well overall from three with a three-point percentage of 99.6% and a true shooting percentage overall of 61% you can see that on this play

Really well initially streu is going to come up and ghost the screen to fade out to the weak side wing and Allen is going to come up to get into the pick and roll p is going to get stuck on the screen and it forces Gafford to make the cover

On the drive and then AA can’t really help off the strong side corner which generally is something a lot of coaches philosophically don’t like to do because it can lead to easy three-pointers so Mitchell’s able to just carve the defense of apart to get to the rim and

Finish on this possession they set up the Stagger for stru to once again ghost the screen to fade to the weak side looking like Mitchell will drive and Perle will have to cover him in a shallow drop but with the defense overplaying that a little bit he’s going

To reject the screen and drive up the middle of the floor and he’s able to break through the first line of defense and have only Gary Trent Jr to worry about finishing over for the bucket now on this play from their match up against the Bucks Lopez is going to be there

Waiting for him and he shuts down the drive pretty well but no one’s going to switch onto him off of the shooters that are nearby and Lopez doesn’t step out to guard him so he’s just going to take with the defense gives him and knock down the easy jumper no team can afford

To be late to help because then he’s going to get easy looks at The Rim but at the same time you can’t really help off of the shooters in the corner because as we’ve seen so far he’s going to make you pay for that if you do so

Ultimately defenses just kind of have to pick their poison and keep in mind it’s not like Donovan Mitchell is just some onedimensional score he loves his threes but outside of just finishing and shooting from Beyond The Arc Mitchell has been an elite mid-range score this season of all players shooting at least

Three or more mid-range shots per game Donovan Mitchell has been the second most efficient in the NBA at 49.7% when you’re this efficient from literally everywhere on the floor defenses are put in some incredibly difficult positions trying to defend you and the Cavaliers benefit from that a

Ton it opened up the opportunity for Mitchell to act as a floor spacer off the ball and pave the way for the emergence of the two-man game between Max stru and Jared Allen these two guys have been incredibly solid in two-man actions often times with streu getting

These wide screens from Allen to get the ball from Mitchell on the wing and then with the defense having been game planning for Mitchell to go to work with the ball in his hands stru and Allen can take advantage of having all that extra help pulled away from inside the arc

Often times teams are going to have their best defenders matched up on Mitchell so when the ball leaves his hands or he’s tucked into the corner as a decoy spacing the floor defenses have to make do with whatever is available to try and slow down the two-man game when

You factor in all of these offensive contributions that you’re getting from Donovan Mitchell this season plus his contributions on the defensive end you can start to see a pretty strong two-way season from Mitchell the part of the box score that’s going to stand out is of

Course the 1.9 steals per game that he’s getting this year but even aside from that he’s held his own defensively very very well his screen navigation has come a really long way and even though we’ve seen a lot of smaller guards end up having a bad habit of dying on screens

Creating a lot of problems for their team to have to clean up Mitchell hasn’t been one of those guys and he’s not just holding up he’s excelling as a Defender bear in mind defense is what Mitchell was kind of known for prior to being drafted he’s very strong in athletic so

The fact that we’ve seen him leverage his physical tools this season on the defensive side of things more than ever really speaks to the defender that he’s become half court defense is one of the most important factors for any team that’s looking to contend and while the

Cavs as a whole are of course known as a great defensive team it’s definitely not taking any hit when they have Mitchell on the floor the Cavs are recording a 90.8 defensive rating in the half court when he’s on the floor this season and that ranks in the 96th percentile in the

NBA in terms of points allowed per 100 possessions he’s doing all of this without his co-star Darius Garland as well as Evan Moy for large portion of this season and despite that Mitchell has elevated the Cavs to being one of the very best teams in a tightly contested Eastern Conference all of that

To me is pretty indicative of an MVP candidate even if you don’t consider him the front runner for the award really hope you guys enjoyed this video I’d appreciate it if you considered leaving a like and subscribing if you want to see more stuff like this huge thank you

To my patrons for helping support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one

Donovan Mitchell is carving his name into the MVP discussion, leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to one of the best records in the NBA. Despite missing Darius Garland and Evan Mobley for large portions of the season, Donovan Mitchell hasn’t just kept the Cleveland Cavaliers afloat; he’s elevated them to new heights.

With all of the stuff that he’s been doing this year to help the Cleveland Cavaliers, my question is this: why shouldn’t he be in the MVP discussion?

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