At Cavs media day, Donovan Mitchell directly addressed the elephant in the room: the team’s three failed trips to the postseason. Mitchell described the feeling of those trips much like the ghostly pachyderm lurking in the corner — as a wall.
“We’ve run into the same wall three times in a row, so to speak,” Mitchell said. “Physically, you can be there, but mentally, can we continue to push through that?”
It was clear Mitchell had thought about the wall a lot — looming, solid, but with its weak points and spidering cracks — because he’d reached a point where he’d visualized he and his teammates beating their heads against it “every day” in order to get through it.
Cleveland’s start to the season was strange. In their second game, a guy rushed onto the court in Brooklyn and up to Mitchell, who, understandably startled, had to jog backwards a few meters until security intervened. The Cavs roster had a revolving door of absences, including Mitchell, from injuries and illness, and a kid (or grown man) called Mitchell washed up as they played against each other in NBA 2K. Somewhere in there, Mitchell played his 200th game with the Cavaliers.
Was this Mitchell’s wall going Nietzschean, not just gazing back but responding with some knocks of its own? Maybe, but through those early prods the team responded. As Mitchell watched, he realized something.
“After we beat Brooklyn, I was in the locker room and I kind of went off like, This is no different than what we did against Indiana,” he tells SB Nation, recalling last season’s playoffs. “We blew the lead, we were up in Game 2, we went to Indiana 1-1 and ended up blowing the lead, right? Okay, so what do we do? We’ll come back with Milwaukee and Detroit and handle our business.”
Sitting at home in Cleveland in a pool of sunlight so thick it looks liquid, Mitchell talks through the games that followed. There was a loss in Toronto (“We defend our behinds off but can’t make a shot”), then a win in Atlanta (“We played great for 46 minutes”), and then he lands on the lesson those early season tests stressed: “Every game is a different type of playoff situation, to me.”
“The goal is to win a championship — yes. But if you allow it to plague you mentally, there’s no development,” he says. “Obviously, you want to learn those through wins and not losses, but the losses do teach you things so when it comes to April you’re ready to go.”
A silver lining to the carousel of availability the Cavs have faced has also been an early-season spotlight on their new players. Mitchell praises Larry Nance Jr. (simultaneously a Cleveland veteran and new addition) and Thomas Bryant. He shouts out Lonzo Ball for doing much more than “we typically would ask him to if he was healthy.”
The list, and his praise, goes on.
“So now it’s like, Hey young guys — who have been phenomenal, Craig Porter, Tyrese Proctor, Jaylon Tyson have been phenomenal — we’re asking you to take another step. Because we need to know that you guys will be there come playoff time in the event that, knock on wood, any injuries happen, we have the depth.”
Mitchell is in one of the more unique positions in the league. After five years in Utah as part of a perennially celebrated duo, on a competitive team that made the playoffs every season, and after Rudy Gobert went to Minnesota in a summer blockbuster deal, Mitchell quietly requested a trade. In Cleveland, Mitchell joined a talented group of young players praised for their genuine identity, but who’d yet to do much with it. There were questions of fit, of whether Mitchell would be the star who required the most gravity, and then the Cavs made it back to the postseason for the first time since LeBron James left in large part due to Mitchell’s leadership but also, his equilibrium.
When speaking about the team, Mitchell’s perspective shifts between coach and player, in micro and macro view. It’s apparent that rather than a straight shot up, as many star players want their trajectory to be, in Cleveland, Mitchell’s has bloomed out in all directions. Part coach, part leader, part star, part role-player, even if by his own admission, his time in Cleveland, especially notching his 200th game, “snuck up” on him.
“It feels like everything’s been happening so fast,” he says, “you look up and you’re at 200 games — and hopefully I’m at 200 or 300 more, right? That’s the goal. It’s a blessing to be able to be with the franchise for almost half of my career. They’ve welcomed me with open arms and have been welcoming ever since I’ve been here.”
The kind of “blink and you’ll miss it” time that turned Mitchell into a veteran also whipped by because of how the team gets along — which is really well. Start talking about his teammates’ quirks (Jarrett Allen’s self-professed nerdom and aptitude for science) and preferences (Nance Jr.’s deep kindness) and Mitchell breaks into a big smile, nodding knowingly. The Cavs just seem relatable.
“I think it makes the locker room easy,” Mitchell says, when asked how that sense of relatability has built up over the seasons. “It also makes it easier for you to have those conversations that you need to have. If you genuinely know that I’m saying this cause I care, then you won’t take it personal. It’s not always the case in the league.”
In close quarters, spending more than half the year together with fatigue, ups and downs, and high stakes all playing a part, there’s bound to be conflict.
“There’s good friction and sometimes there’s bad friction. The fact that we all collectively get along, we understand what we’re about, we understand that life is bigger than just this game. That’s one thing that brings us together as a group so when we hold each other accountable there’s no hard feelings,” Mitchell says. “It’s understanding that this is out of love and respect and passion for what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Mitchell’s own equilibrium comes from a balance struck between maintaining hobbies and habits that seem to naturally compliment his day job. Anyone who’s watched him warm up, going back to his first days in the league, is familiar with the sight of Mitchell’s over-ear wireless headphones, fixed snug on his head. He runs through his shots, drills and jokes with his coaches, does some light conditioning work, all while subtly bobbing his head to whatever music he’s got going that day.
“I have ADD,” Mitchell says, “if I don’t have headphones on I hear everybody screaming at me. So then my mind kind of goes to 85 different places,” he ping pongs a finger around in the air in front of him. “That’s one thing about knowing myself, I know that I need to be able to be here,” he pauses again to chop a palm down the middle of his body, “so whenever I hear a kid screaming my name, I want to give that kid attention. I want to do that, I want to be that for that child. But you also have to understand that this is time to lock in, so I can’t really be in all those different spaces.”
It was a change Mitchell made when he first got to the league, “My first two games I was looking around, like Man, there are people everywhere. Then it just became that this is a place for me to be in my own space and feel where I’m at, and get ready for the game.”
Mitchell’s other hobby, revealed this week in his partnership announcement with CarMax, is drumming. He’s been doing it since he was in the third grade.
”It’s one of those hidden things I think people don’t know about me,” he smiles. “When my teammates hear I can drum, they think it’s sweet until they get out there and try it.”
The spot features Mitchell listing his car via app, backed by a lounge-y band that trails him around the house as he plays video games and waits for an offer. It culminates with keys changing hands and the car about to be towed away, but the real finale is Mitchell, banging out a solo behind a full drum kit in his garage. Another new partner the brand announced along with Mitchell is WNBA rookie Paige Bueckers. Mitchell’s been a fan of the brand since its early partnership days with the WNBA and NBA, shouting out a favorite spot that included Sue Bird and Steph Curry, and the way the brand’s ethos of integrity and empowerment aligns with his own values personally as Donovan Mitchell “the brand” and professionally, with his work as VP of the NBPA.
”Being on the PA, we’re working so hard to bridge the WNBA and NBA, and to see a company that’s continually finding ways to do that partnership is amazing,” he says.
Mitchell says besides his teammates, not many people know he’s a drummer. His favorite drummer is Travis Barker — the first guy he saw mix hip hop into drumming (“That got me going”). His favorite genre to throw on and drum along with is rock, though he doesn’t listen to much of it day to day (“I’ll type in some rock song that I heard back when I was a kid and play that”). Favorite song to play? “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Despite his experience, he admits he gets embarrassed playing in front of people, and that debuting his talent in the commercial is conquering a fear.
You’d think it would be easy to draw a parallel between drumming and basketball — pace, rhythm, directing the game. And you’d be right if you, unlike some interviewers, didn’t get caught up trying to match facets of Mitchell’s game to specifics of drumming. Still, after a laugh, Mitchell gracefully connects the two.
“Different beats,” he chuckles, “different games call for different scenarios. You go out and some beats are 1/16th, or 1/8th. Everybody talks about how certain guys play a different kind of genre of music, you got jazz, rock, you got hip hop — for me, it’s being able to be whatever’s called for. It’s taking what the game gives me and it’s kind of like music, every song you have the bridge, the chorus, the intro. It may not be fast, may need to be slower. My job as a scorer, and as the leader, is understanding whatever’s needed in that moment, that’s what I give.”
And that’s what the Cavs got. Since getting over those early season thumps, Cleveland’s been humming. They’re trailing the very hot-to-start Pistons at 10-6, Mitchell’s averaging 30.2 points per game and 5.3 assists. His connectivity on the floor, reading what’s needed and doing it, doesn’t just shift game to game, but quarter to quarter. He solos, supports, and with a roster as promisingly deep as Cleveland’s there are a lot of minutes to go around. Basically, this is a really big band.
The lesson from drumming continues, perhaps, in the surprises that come with growth and development. On the subject of the last few season’s disappointments and the early lessons in this one, Mitchell sees how each fits and carries over.
“You’re never perfect. Even if we had won, there’s still something. I bet you there’s a bunch of things OKC thinks that they could’ve done better, and they won,” he says, noting the same to be true for the last teams that won the title, going back to the Cavs. “You make adjustments. It’s not just externally, bringing people in, sometimes it’s internal. As great as a season as I had last year, I can be better.”
“Whether it’s your habits, what you’re eating, the way you’re recovering,” he continues, “there’s so many different things that you’re using this time for and building upon. Getting better and better step by step and then collectively, we rise.”
Like the high snap of a snare drum, or that metronomic thumping Mitchell visualized against the team’s last big competitive wall, the Cavs seem on an emphatic course — no matter the outcome. What’s evident, and should be worrisome for any team in the East that envisioned an easy go of the conference this season, is that when Mitchell talks about the wall, it’s clear he’s also visualized the other side.
