Former Miami Heat big man Udonis Haslem recently questioned whether Cleveland Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell desires to remain in Cleveland.
UH OH
WHAT DOES OG KNOW 🤔👀@Bam1of1 remember you got a PlayStation on the line pic.twitter.com/fuFyG7dxxP
— Miami Heatle 🔥🐬 (@HeatleMiami) June 19, 2024
“I don’t know if he’s really interested in going back to Cleveland,” Haslem said. “I don’t think Cleveland is his first choice. I think he might really want to get out of Cleveland. If you look back when he was traded to Cleveland, Cleveland wasn’t even on his radar of teams where he wanted to go. It was New York. It was another team down south somewhere. I ain’t going to say no names. But it was other teams that he was talking about going to. Cleveland was never on the list of teams that he really wanted to go to in the first place.”
Last month, Haslem called “cap” on the notion that Mitchell is happy with the Cavaliers.
“When you talk about Cleveland, I don’t want no parts of that until I understand what Donovan Mitchell gon’ do,” Haslem said. “He say he happy there, but he ain’t sign that extension. So, I’m calling cap. If you happy, sign the extension, so we as a front office can say, ‘Hey, we got Donovan Mitchell locked in. This is what we gon’ look like the next couple years. This is the plan we trying to put together to win a championship.’
“You can use that in free agency. But, if Donovan Mitchell ain’t signing that extension, you can’t go to nobody talking about, ‘Oh, in two, three years, this is what the team gon’ look like. This is what we want to do.’”
On top of that, a fan reportedly ran into Mitchell in Italy a few days back and asked the 27-year-old to join Haslem’s former team in the Heat.
I found Donovan in Italy and told him to come to the heat and he said we will see and wait till summer pic.twitter.com/xZbACYup7Q
— Noah (@Grandpamerch) June 15, 2024
Ever since Mitchell was dealt to the Cavaliers ahead of the 2022-23 season, Cleveland has experienced more regular-season success than almost every team in the Eastern Conference.
The Cavaliers won 51 games in the 2022-23 regular season and 48 in the 2023-24 regular season. Those win totals secured home-court advantage for Cleveland in the opening round of both the 2023 and 2024 NBA Playoffs.
But the Cavaliers have just one playoff series victory to show for all of their regular-season wins over the past two seasons.
In the 2023 NBA Playoffs, Cleveland was embarrassed by the New York Knicks, as the Cavaliers lost in a gentleman’s sweep and Mitchell shot just 43.3 percent from the floor and 28.9 percent from deep for the series.
The Cavaliers’ lone playoff series victory with Mitchell on the roster came in Cleveland’s first-round series against an inexperienced Orlando Magic team in the 2024 NBA Playoffs. Arguably Orlando’s best player in Paolo Banchero is just 21 years old, yet it took seven games to send the Magic home.
Cleveland’s time in the 2024 NBA Playoffs came to an end soon after the team eliminated Orlando. The Cavaliers fell to Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the Boston Celtics — who won the 2024 NBA title — in five games in the second round.
Considering the Cavaliers’ inability to win at a high level when it matters most over the last two years, Haslem is seemingly justified in questioning whether Mitchell wants to stay with the team or play elsewhere. Here’s to hoping that if the Cavaliers are fortunate enough to reach the 2025 NBA Playoffs, they will make the most of that opportunity.
