Can Mitchell be the best player on a championship contender?
Cavs news and links for Wednesday, August 14.
We’re one step closer to NBA basketball returning. Here’s your Cleveland Cavaliers news and links for the day.
The first sip
New head coach Kenny Atkinson has made it clear that he thinks you can win a championship with Donovan Mitchell as your best player.
“You can do it with Donovan,” Atkinson said during his introductory press conference. “He’s an MVP [candidate].”
A new coach isn’t going to come in and belittle their best player during the first day on the job. Still, you can see where Atkinson is coming from. Mitchell was playing at or near an MVP level before he first injured his knee at the end of February. Despite how good he was in the playoffs, he was never truly the same from then on.
There’s increased parity with teams and star power in the league. The difference between contenders and the middle of the pack isn’t as wide as it was even five years ago. The same is true with the gap between the third and 20th best player in the league. That parity gives the Cavs a chance to compete if everything goes right.
The Ringer currently has Mitchell ranked as the 16th-best player in the league which feels like an accurate assessment. If the question was whether the 16th-best player could lead a team to the title in 2012 the answer would’ve been emphatically no. But times have changed. We think about basketball and team building much differently now than we did then. The collective is more important than the individual.
Teams still need their best to carry them for stretches in the playoffs. We saw that from Mitchell last postseason. That may be enough in this era if you have a deep and skilled enough team around your star. Whether or not the Cavs are that remains to be seen.
Random Cavalier of the Day - Scott Pollard
Scott Pollard’s lone season with the Cavs was also the franchise’s first trip to the NBA Finals. He served as the third center for the 2006-07 Cavs behind Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejão. He didn’t see much playing time in that role.
Pollard participated in just 24 games and averaged a lone point and 1.7 rebounds per contest. Pollard’s season high in points and rebounds in a game was just four and he only played double-digit minutes twice. Both came near the end of the regular season.
The 11-year vet finished his career the following season with the ‘08 champion Boston Celtics.