CLEVELAND (AP) — When Darius Garland learned about Cleveland’s stunning trade, the Cavaliers’ All-Star point guard first promised to keep it a secret and then ran around a basketball court in Nashville screaming.
Jarrett Allen woke from an afternoon nap, groggily looked at a text on his phone that said “Donovan Mitchell” and wondered if it was a dream.
Evan Mobley was working out in Los Angeles on Sept. 1 when a stranger told him Mitchell was Cleveland bound.
“I was like, ‘What?’” Mobley, the Cavs’ talented second-year forward, said Monday at media day. “I was like, ‘Oh, shoot.’ Then started texting people and stuff and saw who got traded and all that.”
Shock has become reality for the Cavaliers, who rocked the NBA this summer with their acquisition of Mitchell, a three-time All-Star in Utah and a player capable of moving Cleveland back among the league’s top teams.
The Cavs won 44 games last season (a 22-win jump from the previous year) and only missed the playoffs due to a rash of injuries down the stretch. Cleveland got valuable experience in the play-in tournament before being eliminated.
Mitchell’s arrival has changed things — dramatically.
Expectations are through the roof. So are goals.
“He takes us to the next level,” said veteran guard Ricky Rubio, who spent two seasons playing with Mitchell on the Jazz. “He’s that type of player all teams need to win a championship. You can give him the ball and he can give you a bucket at any time. But he knows how to play, he knows how to do it the right way.”
The Cavs believe Mitchell perfectly fits into the culture established by coach J.B. Bickerstaff, and there’s little worry about him meshing on the floor.
But while there’s external talk and pressure about making a championship run, Koby Altman, the team’s president of basketball operations who swooped in to get Mitchell when it appeared he was going to New York, is preaching patience.
“This year is not contention or bust at all,” he said. “We’ve added a really big piece and so that is going to take time. There’s going to be some failures there. This group is really excited to play with each other and I want to grow this thing over the course of a few seasons before we start talking about that (a title).
“With that said, we’re not going to put a ceiling on what this team can do currently.”
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