Donovan Mitchell still believes in the Cavaliers, even if you don't

• Jamal CollierNov 13, 2026, 06:45 AM ET

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  Jamal Collier is an NBA reporter at ESPN. Collier covers the Milwaukee Bucks, Chicago Bulls and the Midwest region of the NBA, including stories such as Minnesota's iconic jersey swap between Anthony Edwards and Justin Jefferson. He has been at ESPN since Sept. 2021 and previously covered the Bulls for the Chicago Tribune. You can reach out to Jamal on Twitter @JamalCollier or via email Jamal.Collier@espn.com.

A FEW WEEKS before Donovan Mitchell and singer Coco Jones were set to be married, they had another reason to rejoice.

It was early July. The pair had gathered for a joint bachelor-bachelorette party before they were officially married in August at a private residence in upstate New York. Seven groomsmen and six bridesmaids joined the couple to commemorate their upcoming nuptials, but Jones and Mitchell took a moment for themselves during the trip. They knew their future was together, and now they were about to solidify where they'd be building it.

The Cleveland Cavaliers were poised to offer Mitchell a four-year, $273 million contract extension that would keep them in Cleveland through 2031. And he was set to sign it, even though he understood that by waiting until next summer, he could earn an additional $80 million.

For years, he had reiterated how much he loved the team and the city. He didn't want a lingering contract negotiation to loom over the 2026-27 Cavs season. He wanted to make the commitment.

"The summer of celebrations," Mitchell told ESPN.

It was a welcome reprieve. His summer was preceded by yet another spring of disappointment.

For the first time in his career, despite making the playoffs in each of his first nine seasons, Mitchell advanced to the conference finals. The Cavs had survived a seven-game first-round series against the Toronto Raptors and then won a Game 7 on the road against the top-seeded Detroit Pistons. Mitchell took it as a sign of growth, that they were finally ready for whatever adversity would arrive. It was Cleveland's deepest run without LeBron James in 34 years.

Then they ran out of gas.

An embarrassing sweep at the hands of the eventual champion New York Knicks finished their 2026 playoff run and left Cleveland with a losing postseason record overall (8-10).

A familiar feeling sat with the franchise.

"In the moment it kind of leaves a sour taste in your mouth," Mitchell told ESPN. "But as you sit ... you have to realize, OK, you've done something you haven't done before. OK. Now that's great, but I wouldn't call it an accomplishment. I would just call it a step."

In Mitchell's four years in Cleveland, the Cavs have consistently been one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, racking up 51-, 48-, 64- and 52-win seasons.

A regular-season juggernaut. And then a playoff disappointment.

As the Cavaliers entered yet another offseason with the same core, the landscape of the Eastern Conference changed around them.

Rumors of a homecoming with James percolated across the organization and the league, but James chose Philadelphia. In turn, the Cavs bet on continuity, on changes along the margins.

Sources inside and out of the organization said the Cavs weren't interested in trading forward Evan Mobley, who's on a max rookie contract. After acquiring former MVP James Harden at last February's deadline, they re-signed the 37-year-old to a new three-year contract. And one day after the season ended, the team squashed any speculation about the status of coach Kenny Atkinson.

And then Mitchell cemented his commitment.

"When doubt lingers in an organization, 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."

Their biggest move was acquiring wing Peyton Watson to fill the role as a fifth starter to help protect Mitchell and Harden on defense. So far, their bet hasn't paid off. In fact, the Cavs' starting lineup has a minus-12.0 NET rating this season. Only the starters for Phoenix and Utah have been worse.

It echoes an underwhelming start of the Cavs season. They are 6-6 with skepticism around the league and pundits wondering why this would be any different than Cavs teams that have come up short in years past.

Still, Mitchell made his commitment to the Cavs because he believes in them. But he knows franchises, and especially their superstars, aren't 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 a- swept.'"

THE DONOVAN MITCHELL basketball camp comes to Greenwich, Connecticut, each summer.

For seven of the nine summers since Mitchell entered the NBA, Mitchell has spent a weekend hosting the event for kids from first grade through eighth, in Utah and then now in Cleveland. But he always comes back to the tristate area, where he grew up while his father worked for the New York Mets.

During his camp this offseason, Mitchell knew he was in for it. And the jokes often began with a setup that defined the Cavs' dramatic loss to the Knicks in May.

"Well, analytically ... "

It was a callback to a quote from Atkinson. At a practice before Game 4 of the conference finals, Atkinson said the Cavs were "analytically winning the series" because of expected shot metrics that showed Cleveland actually winning two of three games. Or, in other words, the Knicks were making shots they weren't supposed to make -- and the Cavaliers weren't making shots they were supposed to make.

Still, it made all the wrong headlines.

"You get swept and you look the way we looked, there's criticism and the jokes come with it," Mitchell says. "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 attempted to add context to his statement, that he was responding to a question about how the Cavs could still have belief despite 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's a familiar feeling for the Cavs, seeing their words 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," Cavs guard Sam Merrill told ESPN. "But we just have fun with stuff like that."

That '23 postseason was the first playoff run for Mitchell, Allen and Mobley. They advanced to the second round in the next two seasons before finally cracking the conference finals last spring.

But despite that progress, skeptics around the league point to the same throughline for the Cavs.

"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."

ON THE MORNING of Oct. 26, Atkinson decided to put an alternative spin on the team's film session before it hosted the Minnesota Timberwolves that evening.

The Cavs 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, the Cavs saw a 22-point fourth-quarter lead against the Brooklyn Nets get reduced to two with 8.1 seconds remaining; the Cavs held on.

Those blown leads served as a window into the doubt that has followed the team around during the Mitchell era. In Game 1 of the conference finals, the Cavs were ahead by 22 points at Madison Square Garden before collapsing in historic fashion.

Inside the film room, rather than fire up footage from one of the first few games, or even look back at the playoffs, Atkinson turned to a different 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 famously took a 1-0 advantage in the 55th minute, and then completely switched up their play style, falling back into a defensive formation.

Their aggression went cold; the momentum of the match shifted. Argentina rallied to a 2-1 victory to advance to the final.

"[Kenny's] just trying to find ways for it to stick in our head," Cavs forward Jaylon Tyson told ESPN. "It worked."

The Cavs put it into practice that evening. They'd trailed by 15 in the second quarter and double digits at halftime, but after 15 lead changes and five ties in the final minutes, the Cavs survived a 47-point haymaker from Anthony Edwards. Cleveland won in overtime, 127-125.

"There's a lot of belief in this group," Mitchell says. "And the way that we have been able to battle through some adversity and continue to get better and better."

Even still, Cleveland's inconsistency has continued. The Cavs lost by double digits to the Charlotte Hornets on Monday, and then bounced back to beat the Knicks in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. No one has exemplified their up-and-down season like Harden, now in Year 18, but was brought in to be Mitchell's co-star. Harden 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 during the 2012-13 season.

"My name is James Harden, and I used to score a lot of points," Harden said after the Cavs 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 up-and-down start, the Cavs can look at last season as a reason for patience. They were one game over .500 on Dec. 19, before winning 52 games and securing the No.4 seed.

Mitchell sees the progress through the pain. He sees examples around the league that give him confidence in Cleveland's approach, noting how 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. "That how many teams were like, 'Oh, it should be this. This guy needs to be traded. He needs to be fired.'

"All these f----ing things that happen in a lot of championship organizations right before ... "

Mitchell snapped his fingers.

"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 to s--- just because everybody else thinks you should."