Cavaliers unlikely to trade Donovan Mitchell despite injuries to Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, per report

The clock is ticking for the Cleveland Cavaliers when it comes to star guard Donovan Mitchell. Cleveland acquired him from the Utah Jazz with the hopes of becoming a legitimate championship contender before he could reach unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2025, but so far, they’ve failed to do so. Cleveland lost in the first round of the 2023 playoffs to the New York Knicks, and this year’s Cavaliers are a relatively unimpressive 15-12 through 27 games.

Their regular season record might not be so concerning if there was reason to believe they would turn it around. If anything, the opposite is true. Darius Garland is expected to miss the next month or so with a facial fracture, and Evan Mobley is expected to sit even longer after undergoing knee surgery. If Cleveland tumbles in the standings without two of their four best players, any contending hopes they might have had will quickly fade. With that possibility growing likelier and likelier, rumors have already begun to swirl about Mitchell’s future. The entire basketball world expects Mitchell to land in New York eventually, and if he could leave for nothing in 2025, might it make sense for the Cavaliers to recoup some value by trading him now?

Perhaps, but according to Yahoo’s Jake Fischer, Cleveland isn’t considering that strategy at this point. The plan for now remains building a winner around the four-man core of Mitchell, Mobley, Garland and Jarrett Allen. That core has played together in just 11 games this season, and it has outscored opponents by 13 points in the 156 minutes they’ve played. Last season, that group outscored opponents by 167 points in 871 minutes last season, a very strong figure, and the hope this season was that the additions of Max Strus and Georges Niang would push the Cavaliers over the top.

Only time will tell if thy will actually do so, but the Cavaliers are starting at a major disadvantage with their injuries, and the longer they wait to consider Mitchell trades, the less they are likely to receive. If the rest of the league believes that Mitchell is New York-bound, it’s going to be hard to convince other teams to make serious offers for him over the summer, when he’ll only have one year of team-control left. A deadline deal might be slightly more appealing to the rest of the league, as it would encompass two separate postseasons. After all, the more teams in the bidding, the more Cleveland would get for Mitchell.

For now, though, the Cavaliers still seem resolved to try to find a way to keep him for the long haul. It’s a significant risk given the frequency of these New York rumors, but Mitchell is their best player by far. If Cleveland is going to contend in the near future, he is their best hope of doing so. That is not a player to be traded lightly, and so far, the Cavaliers have not proven willing to do so quite yet.