Donovan Mitchell was set to sign a four-year, $273 million contract extension with the Cleveland Cavaliers that would keep him in Cleveland through 2031, even though waiting until next summer could have earned him an additional $80 million. The deal came just weeks before his wedding to singer Coco Jones, which took place in August at a private residence in upstate New York.
The pair had gathered in early July for a joint bachelor-bachelorette party, and they took a moment for themselves during the trip. They knew their future was together, and they were about to decide where they would build it.
For years, Mitchell had said how much he loved the team and the city. He did not want a lingering contract negotiation hanging over the 2026-27 season. He wanted to make the commitment.
“The summer of celebrations,” Mitchell told ESPN.
It was a welcome reprieve after another spring of disappointment.
A breakthrough followed by a familiar sting
Despite making the playoffs in each of his first nine seasons, Mitchell reached the conference finals for the first time in his career. The Cavaliers survived a seven-game first-round series against the Toronto Raptors and then won Game 7 on the road against the top-seeded Detroit Pistons. Mitchell saw it as a sign of growth, proof that the team was finally ready for whatever adversity arrived. It was Cleveland’s deepest postseason run without LeBron James in 34 years.
An embarrassing sweep at the hands of the eventual champion New York Knicks ended that run and left Cleveland with a losing postseason record overall, at 8-10. The franchise recognised the feeling immediately.
“In the moment it kind of leaves a sour taste in your mouth,” Mitchell said. “But as you sit … you have to realise, OK, you’ve done something you haven’t done before. Now that’s great, but I wouldn’t call it an accomplishment. I would just call it a step.”
In Mitchell’s four seasons in Cleveland, the Cavaliers have consistently ranked among the top teams in the Eastern Conference, winning 51, 48, 64 and 52 regular-season games. The pattern has been clear: a regular-season juggernaut followed by a playoff disappointment.
A quiet offseason built on continuity
As the Cavaliers entered another offseason with the same core, the Eastern Conference landscape shifted around them. Rumours of a homecoming with James circulated across the organisation and the league, but James chose Philadelphia. Cleveland instead bet on continuity and on changes along the margins.
Sources inside and outside the organisation said the Cavaliers were not interested in trading forward Evan Mobley, who is on a max rookie contract. After acquiring former MVP James Harden at last February’s trade deadline, the team re-signed the 37-year-old to a new three-year contract. The day after the season ended, the Cavaliers also put to rest any speculation about the status of coach Kenny Atkinson.
Then Mitchell made his commitment official.
“When doubt lingers in an organisation, it’s not great,” Atkinson said. “Everybody’s just unsettled. So, the fact that Don locked it up, that was huge. It’s like a sigh of relief. You know you’re going to have your leader and it’s going to give you stability. It helps you just move forward quicker.”
The team’s biggest move was acquiring wing Peyton Watson to serve as a fifth starter and help protect Mitchell and Harden on defence. So far, that bet has not paid off. The Cavaliers’ starting lineup has a minus-12.0 NET rating this season, and only the starters for Phoenix and Utah have been worse.
The start mirrors the team’s wider struggles. Cleveland is 6-6, and across the league sceptics are asking why this season should be any different from the Cavaliers teams that have fallen short in years past.
Mitchell still believes in this group. He also knows that franchises, and especially their superstars, are not judged by participation trophies.
“For your own mental [health], you have to embrace it and then be proud of that,” he said. “In the same token, still keep the motivation of, ‘You got your butt swept.'”
Turning criticism into camp material
Each summer, the Donovan Mitchell basketball camp comes to Greenwich, Connecticut. For seven of the nine summers since Mitchell entered the NBA, he has spent a weekend hosting the event for children from first grade through eighth grade, first in Utah and now in Cleveland. He always returns to the tristate area, where he grew up while his father worked for the New York Mets.
At this offseason’s camp, Mitchell knew the jokes were coming, and many of them began with a setup that referenced the Cavaliers’ dramatic loss to the Knicks in May. The jokes were a callback to a quote from Atkinson. Before Game 4 of the conference finals, Atkinson said the Cavaliers were “analytically winning the series” because expected shot metrics showed Cleveland had actually won two of three games. In other words, the Knicks were making shots they were not supposed to make, and the Cavaliers were missing shots they were supposed to make.
“You get swept and you look the way we looked, there’s criticism and the jokes come with it,” Mitchell said. “We all laugh at it, but at the same time it’s like, all right, bet. Time’s going to come. But hey, you got to live with it. You got to live with all parts of it.”
Before a rematch with New York last week, Atkinson tried to add context to his statement. He said he had been responding to a question about how the Cavaliers could still believe after trailing 3-0.
“I answered the question as it was taken,” Atkinson said. “‘You’re down 3-0, what hope do you have of even giving your guys?’ We get a lot of information, and I wasn’t lying in that sense. But in no sense was it like, ‘Oh man, we deserve to be winning.’ Zero, zero, zero thought of that.”
It is a familiar experience for the Cavaliers, whose words often become the story instead of their play. After losing to the Knicks in the first round of the 2023 playoffs, Allen became a meme for saying “the lights were brighter than expected” after playing at Madison Square Garden.
“That’s the world we live in,” Cavaliers guard Sam Merrill told ESPN. “But we just have fun with stuff like that.”
That 2023 postseason was the first playoff run for Mitchell, Allen and Mobley. The team advanced to the second round in each of the next two seasons before finally reaching the conference finals last spring. Still, sceptics around the league point to the same throughline.
“All their questions will be answered in the playoffs,” an Eastern Conference executive told ESPN. “But it feels like they have the same issues that have plagued them for years. Not sure what’s going to be different.”
Learning from a different sport
On the morning of Oct. 26, Atkinson chose an unusual approach to the team’s film session before it hosted the Minnesota Timberwolves that evening. The Cavaliers had already blown a 29-point lead against the Philadelphia 76ers on opening night, becoming the first team in league history to lose the opener after building a 20-point lead at halftime.
Two nights later, Cleveland saw a 22-point fourth-quarter lead against the Brooklyn Nets shrink to two with 8.1 seconds remaining, but the Cavaliers held on. Those collapses reflected the doubt that has followed the team throughout the Mitchell era. In Game 1 of the conference finals, Cleveland led Madison Square Garden by 22 points before collapsing in historic fashion.
Rather than show footage from the early games or revisit the playoffs, Atkinson turned to another sport entirely. He had his players watch clips of the England vs. Argentina match from the FIFA World Cup semi-final this past July. England took a 1-0 lead in the 55th minute and then abruptly changed its approach, falling back into a defensive shape. Its aggression went cold, and the momentum shifted. Argentina rallied to win 2-1 and advance to the final.
“[Kenny’s] just trying to find ways for it to stick in our head,” Cavaliers forward Jaylon Tyson told ESPN. “It worked.”
The Cavaliers applied the lesson that evening. They trailed by 15 in the second quarter and were down by double digits at halftime. After 15 lead changes and five ties in the final minutes, they survived a 47-point performance from Anthony Edwards and won in overtime, 127-125.
Consistency still the missing piece
“There’s a lot of belief in this group,” Mitchell said. “And the way that we have been able to battle through some adversity and continue to get better and better.”
Even so, Cleveland’s inconsistency has persisted. The Cavaliers lost by double digits to the Charlotte Hornets on Monday, then bounced back to beat the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. Harden, now in his 18th season and brought in to be Mitchell’s co-star, embodies the team’s up-and-down year. He is averaging 16.7 points and 5.6 assists while shooting 39% from the field, his lowest marks since he became a full-time starter in the 2012-13 season.
“My name is James Harden, and I used to score a lot of points,” Harden said after the Cavaliers’ victory in New York. “I still score points, but I’m finding other ways to impact the game as well.
“I’m still trying to figure it out. Donovan averages a lot of points. He’s a scoring machine on this team. Just picking and choosing when I have opportunities to score and then do other things to impact winning.”
Despite the uneven start, the Cavaliers have reason for patience. They were one game over .500 on Dec. 19 last season, then won 52 games and secured the No. 4 seed.
Mitchell sees progress through the pain, and he points to examples around the league that strengthen his confidence in Cleveland’s approach. He noted that New York lost in the second round twice and in the conference finals before winning the championship.
“People tend to forget those things,” he said. “How many teams were like, ‘Oh, it should be this. This guy needs to be traded. He needs to be fired.’
“I’m not saying we’re guaranteed to win, but it’s just how it’s been. So we can’t sit here and overreact just because everybody else thinks you should.”