CLEVELAND, Ohio — In this episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, Ethan Sands, Chris Fedor and Jimmy Watkins unpack the Cavs’ jarring loss to the Utah Jazz and why it felt heavier than a single January defeat.
Takeaways:
1. Chronic Inconsistency Suggests a Flawed Identity
The Cavaliers are plagued by a maddening inconsistency that points to deep-seated issues beyond typical regular-season slumps. The team followed arguably their best win of the season against the Minnesota Timberwolves with what was described as their worst loss to the “tanking” Utah Jazz. This “one step forward, two steps back” pattern has become a recurring theme. The speakers argue that the team consistently plays down to its competition, lacks a sustained 48-minute effort and displays bad habits that aren’t being corrected. At the season’s halfway mark, the question is shifting from whether the Cavaliers can figure it out to whether this frustrating, .500-level performance is simply who this team is.
2. The Team Has Clear, Exploitable Defensive Weaknesses
Opponents have developed clear “blueprints to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers,” which consistently exploit the team’s core defensive flaws. The three key weaknesses are a “horrible” transition defense that is vulnerable to high-pace teams, an inability to control the defensive glass and prevent second-chance points, and the league’s worst 3-point defense. The loss to the Jazz highlighted all three issues. Despite head coach Kenny Atkinson acknowledging these defensive shortcomings before games, the team has shown no ability to correct them on the court, leading to questions about whether the issues are schematic, effort-based, or a combination of both.
3. A Lack of Mental Toughness and Maturity Is a Central Problem
A significant portion of the team’s struggles is attributed to a “troubling lack of basketball maturity.” The podcast hosts observe that the Cavaliers act like a veteran team that has “earned the right to diminish the regular season,” when in reality, they have accomplished nothing. This is demonstrated by their tendency to get “chesty and high after one victory” before immediately losing focus against a lesser opponent. This issue of mental fragility was supposed to be the primary focus for improvement after last season’s playoff exit, yet 41 games into the new season, Atkinson is still citing a lack of a “mental edge” as a recurring reason for losses.
4. Key Players Are Stagnating, Placing an Unsustainable Burden on Donovan Mitchell
The expected leap from the team’s young core has not materialized, particularly from Evan Mobley. His strong performances are described as “outliers” rather than the norm, and his offensive assertiveness has not been consistent, with zero 30-point games this season. This stagnation, combined with Jarrett Allen’s inconsistent impact, has forced Donovan Mitchell into a heliocentric role that the roster was specifically built to avoid. Mitchell’s usage rate is now almost identical to his last year in Utah — a situation he wanted to leave. The on/off court numbers are alarming, confirming that the team collapses without Mitchell, placing an unsustainable burden on him long before the playoffs.
5. Coaching and Organizational Philosophy Are Under Scrutiny
The team’s persistent issues are raising questions about Atkinson and the organization’s overall direction. Atkinson is criticized for being unable to motivate the team, fix recurring problems, or get them mentally prepared to play, with players’ post-game comments seemingly pointing the finger at the coaching staff. More broadly, the podcast suggests the entire organization is struggling to transition from a “plucky underdog” to a “finals or bust” contender with high expectations. The shocking playoff loss to the Pacers appears to have left the franchise confused about how to approach the regular season, leading to mixed messaging and an inability to handle pressure.
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Transcript
NOTE: This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and could contain misspellings and errors.
Ethan Sands: What up, Cavs Nation? I’m your host, Ethan Sands, and I’m back with another episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. And joining me today, you know, it’s a big one when we got all three of us on the show, Chris Fedor, cleveland.com Cavs beat reporter, and Jimmy Watkins, cleveland.com columnist. And we’re coming to you guys after the Cavs latest loss. And unfortunately, Chris and Jimmy, I think the Cavs are just giving us a difficult decision of which game or which loss has been the worst of their season. This one. 123-112 to the Utah Jazz, who came into the contest 13 and 25 with the worst defense in the entire NBA. Guys, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I just want to get into your initial reactions.
Chris Fedor: They’re halfway through the season now. Tonight was the halfway point, and There are about 10 different choices for worst loss of the year. That’s just not where you want to be. How do you trail to 7 by 17 at home to the Utah Jazz, a team that is tanking? Everybody knows that they’re tanking. It’s just. It’s not a good situation that the Cavs are in. And it’s. It’s funny because, you know, Kenny Atkinson was talking about, well, it’s not like we’ve lost five of the last seven. No, but you’ve lost two of the last three. Like, I think it’s a matter of perspective and how you want to view it, but the bottom line is that this team just is not good right now. They don’t play consistently with a level of effort that you would expect for 48 minutes. They play down to their competition. Um, it’s hit and miss whether or not they can beat good teams. It’s just, they’ve got eight and a half playable players at the moment. It’s just like we keep saying, like, wait until. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Wait until blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, early in the season, it was, they’re dealing with a bunch of injuries. They’re dealing with a bunch of different lineups. They have a lot of things that they have to figure out internally. And juggling all these different things is very, very difficult. And yes, it’s our job to provide that context. It’s our job to provide that perspective. But to come off your best performance of the year against the Minnesota Timberwolves and do this against the tanking Jazz, like, come on, the Cavs have to be better than this, and they just haven’t been. And at some Point you just have to wonder, is this just who they are? Are they just this team that is going to continue to hover around 500, a high priced team, the only team in the second apron that is just destined to disappoint. And, and we don’t have any reason to talk about the potential or the upside of this team because it just doesn’t exist to the level that a lot of people expected coming into the year. Like, I’m not there yet, but I think it’s fair to start asking those questions. We’re halfway through the season already and these things continue to happen with this basketball team.
Jimmy Watkins: We’re damn, close. We’re not there yet. 41 games into the season, we haven’t lost five out of seven.
Jimmy Watkins: You’re .500, essentially. You were the number one seed in the Eastern Conference. Now you’re 500 and you’re losing to teams like the Utah Jazz when you’re on a supposed upswing. Kenny said after the game, well, we have a good basketball team. You had a good basketball team. You certainly had a good basketball team. You had a basketball team with an elite offense. You had a basketball team that brought the energy every single night. You had a basketball team that even as it drifted away a little bit from its defensive identities, remained engaged on that end of the floor. Or the five things I just said are not true anymore. With 41 games in the season, the Cavs have lost six games already. It’s a team sub.500 the entire season. Last year they lost seven going 36 and seven or whatever it was against 500 teams. Is that the mark of a champion? No, it’s the mark of a good, talented team that brings the energy every night. There were times last year we showed up to the arena, I’m just like, they’re going to win by 30 tonight. Yeah, you could just bank on it. The talent bore out when these kind of matchups would happen because the energy was there, they were having fun, whatever it was, shots were falling, all that stuff.
Chris Fedor: This year it was significantly more talented than the other teams that they were playing too. Like that was something that was a clear advantage for them.
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah, this year you can’t point to a single game on the schedule and say auto win. You just can’t count on that. You just can’t count on that the same way. And that is as big of an indictment as you can make of this team as any because I think it encapsulates everything. It’s the energy, it’s the lack of defense. Tonight, it was missing shots around the rim. The Utah Jazz have won four games on the road all season coming into tonight. They came in and they blitzed you 21 to 4. To start the game like that just doesn’t happen to good teams. It just doesn’t happen to good teams. And we’re 41 games into the season. At a certain point, you are what your record and our eyes are showing.
Ethan Sands: And Jimmy, to your point about looking at the schedule, I write a preview article for every morning before the game. And I was doing my research, looking at the Utah Jazz ad, and I was like, oh, okay, so they can do this, they can do that. Oh, blinking red light. They’re fourth in pace in the NBA. Let me start writing the article of why the Cavs could lose to the Utah Giants. I legitimately had that written out for this morning. And that’s the opposite of the feeling that we had last year. Last year was, okay, they’re going to win and they’re going to do it dominantly this year, it’s okay. Now we have to look into who they’re playing, the stats on the other side, try and figure out what’s going on. And the other thing is this Cavs team, as you mentioned, Jimmy, continues to take one step forward and two steps back. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the Cavs had arguably their best win of the season on Saturday against the Minnesota Timberwolves. And you come in riding high and then you lose, arguably again, your worst game of the season against the Utah Jazz. And this is a recurring theme the Cavs continue to have where they get up for one game and. And then they have this mental thought that maybe we’re better than who we are. And again, it goes back to the point that’s being made that they’re good on paper, they’re good when it comes to. You read down the lineup, you read down the roster, and you’re like, this guy can give us 20 tonight. This guy can give us 20 tonight. Like the Cavs did against the Minnesota Timberwolves when they had five different players score 20 points. That’s the team that they’re supposed to be. And they did it against a top five defense. So to do this against the worst defense in the entire NBA is appalling to me. And as Chris mentioned, I think this cannot be said too many times. The Utah Jazz are actively taking and trying to figure out how they can win more ping pong balls at the.
Chris Fedor: Next draft, and they’re exhausted. I Went into the Utah Jazz locker room after the game and I talked to a couple of the guys for the Jazz that I know well and they’re exhausted because they’re in the middle of this stretch where they’ve only been at home for like four days or they’re only going to be at home for four days out of 19 or 21 or something like that. They started a four game road trip at the beginning of January, came home for back to back games against Dallas and Charlotte and this tonight against the Cavs was the start of a five game road trip. So they all talked about how exhausted they are and, and how difficult this stretch of the schedule is for them. And they come here to Cleveland and they looked bigger, they looked more physical, they looked more active and they looked better than the Cavs. The Cavs had no answers for Keonte George, who’s having a great season by the way, probably going to be an All Star. The Cavs had no answers for Lowry Markkanen. Great season by the way, awesome dude, great player, might be an all Star this year. We’ll have to wait and see on that one. And they had no answers for keeping Yusuf Nurkic off the glass. Like I looked up in the first quarter and I think he had something like six rebounds in the first six minutes. I said he might go for 20 tonight against these guys. And it’s just crazy to think about how good the Cavs looked against the Timberwolves in upper echelon team in the Western Conference. The second game against the Timberwolves and then how bad they looked just two days later. That’s been the story of their season. The these lapses of consistency have been there since the beginning of the season and so many players and so many coaches have talked about, we understand the regular season is a grind. It’s 82 games. You know, you can’t get too emotional. You can’t ride the roller coaster like all this other stuff. But they also say that the regular season is about developing habits. The Cavs have so many bad habits that just aren’t going to be broken because Max Struse happens to come back. Right? The Cavs have so many bad habits that just aren’t going to be broken because they’re going to look at the schedule c March and be like, hey, the playoffs are right around the corner. Let’s just fix everything that has gone wrong in the first half of the season. And and they talk about, hey, a lot of our problems are correctable. A lot of our problems are self inflicted. Okay, some of them are, but not all of them are. And what they continue to show are bad habits. These just aren’t habits that championship basketball teams have unless they’ve already been to the mountaintop and they can treat the regular season a different kind of way. Right? Like the Cavs act like a team that has earned the right to diminish the regular season. When they haven’t earned that right, they haven’t done anything to earn that right. The Cavs act like a team that has more significantly more talented than the team that they’re going to play against and they’re just not that level of talented anymore. Not this version of the Cavs. The Cavs act like a team that has accomplished something and they haven’t accomplished anything. They haven’t won anything. At some point they have to break these bad habits and until they do, I think you’re going to continue to see these baffling, inexcusable losses. And I think you have to just wonder are they this high priced team that is just overrated and bound to underachieve?
Ethan Sands: And Chris, we’ve talked about this all season, but there are blueprints to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. As I mentioned earlier, Pace is one of them. It’s probably the biggest one because the Cavs transition defense is just horrible. It’s abysmal. The second one is rebounding. As we mentioned it with Yusuf Nurkic. If you’re able to get on the offensive glass and create second chance points, you’re going to have a good chance of beating the Cavs because it’s not only going to give you extra possessions and extra lift in the basket, but it’s going to demoralize them mentally. And the third one is if you’re a good three point shooting team, the Cavs are going to have trouble with you because they are the worst three point defense in the entire NBA. And all three of these things are circled around the defense. And what’s appalling to me and what has been on my mind since the beginning of training camp is Kenny Atkinson continuing to say that the defense is way ahead of the offense or as we’ve talked about the defensive identity dropping off and he’s continued to reiterate this and saying that the offense let down the defense and all these things, but the Cavs shot the ball well. Against the Utah Jazz they were 44.6% from the field. Okay, that’s average, but 41.5% from deep 17 of 41, that’s a good three point percentage. And Jimmy I want to get your thoughts on these three different things that teams, and especially even if we’re talking about teams like the Utah Jazz that can hone in on one, two, maybe even three of these different things, what area do you think would be most beneficial for the Cavs to clean up going forward to try and help take away one of the blueprints that teams are actively using to defeat them?
Jimmy Watkins: I’m going to start with the glass because I’ve been combing through while you’ve been talking Yousef Nurkic’s basketball reference page and Yusuf Nurkic has had a fine career, is actually having a nice little resurgence this year at his age 31 season. But he is essentially they have the stat value of a replacement player. He is essentially a replacement player. He is by all the metrics a guy. He is the picture of Jag in the NBA tonight and he was plus 13 with 17 rebounds tonight against one of supposedly the best front courts in the NBA. And this is, this has happened for years in some regard with Jared Allen and Evan Mobley getting beat out physical on the boards like this. It just feels like we’re having this conversation to a new depth. And far too often this year when teams like this can make you feel that small. And I know the Cavs are playing smaller around those guys this year. That’s a part of it. It’s a big part of it. But again, that’s why you have this construction. Those two are supposed to make up for a lot of the stuff that happens around them. And Jared Allen again tonight, like where are you at for long stretches? For long stretches he just fades away. We finished with eight points, four rebounds.
Chris Fedor: And he was so good over the weekend against Minnesota.
Jimmy Watkins: It was excellent.
Chris Fedor: It just can’t be a bi monthly occurrence with him.
Jimmy Watkins: His reputation, at least over the 82 game season has been Mr. Reliable plays every game. So many double doubles. It’s not happening. It’s not happening. And I will continue to say people get it twisted when they say that Jared Allen, as Jared Allen goes, the Cavs go. I think as, as the Cavs go, Jared Allen goes. He is a sign of their health, just not the way you think. His ineffectiveness, while yes, somewhat under his control, is as much a symptom of the bigger sickness that’s happening here as it is the other way around. And it is the other way around. That’s the complicated thing about both Evan Mobley and Jared Allen is that they can do more and the Cavs can do more and they need to do More. For the Cavs to do more. And the Cavs need to do more for them to do more. And we’re tied up in pretzels. Right. But that’s. That’s what I would say about. Because that’s. Again, that’s the. One of the linchpin identity type things that we’re supposed to know about this team is that those two bring it every night. They are the foundation of an elite defense, regardless of all the shuffling pieces around them. And there are the Cavs, by virtue of losing Isaac Koro and then trying to replace him with Lonzo Ball, who’s been ineffective. He was. There’s a lot happening on the perimeter defense. Far too many dudes, Giante, George, a lot tonight are just waltzing to the rim, no resistance. And that’s a problem. That’s how you end up with 32 assists. That’s how the Jazz end up with 32 assists. And they’re one of the best assist teams in the league, but those guys are just. They’re just not there. And the transition thing, I mean, I don’t want to. We could beat a dead horse. Just run. You just need to play harder. It’s really not that difficult. I know teams are playing fast. I know the NBA is harder than ever. Other teams are managing to play transition defense despite all the pace. It is possible. And we have seen the Cavs do it better than this. I know they play fast, but it’s the Utah chess. They’re not good. They’re not good. They’re supposed to be the inconsistent Wax and Wayne team, especially on the road in the middle of a brutal road trip, as Chris mentioned is complete role reversal tonight when it comes to energy.
Chris Fedor: It was funny over the weekend. The Cavs played great against Minnesota. Great. Darius was lethal in the pick and roll game. They had no answers for Jared Allen. Evan Mobley was a monster. The assertiveness, the aggressiveness that he played with, it was awesome. And it was probably their best, most complete game all season long. But, like, as I was sitting back and consuming some of the commentary, I was kind of chuckling to myself because the things that people were so impressed with Evan Mobley doing against Minnesota, you shouldn’t be overly impressed that that should.
Ethan Sands: Happen all the time.
Chris Fedor: You’re paying him to do that all the time. You’ve lifted him on this pedestal saying that he’s going to be this and that and this and that. That shouldn’t be an outlier performance. What he did against Minnesota should not be an outlier. Where you’re like, oh, my God, look at Evan Mobley. There’s the example of why he’s this unicorn. It shouldn’t happen once every two weeks. You know what I mean? And like, I know Darius, there are things attached to his play throughout the course of this season, and you have to put it in context. You have to provide that perspective. But it’s the same thing with him. What he did against Minnesota, he should do over and over and over. That’s what they’re paying him for. That’s how they’ve built this team. They need greatness from Darius Garland, they need greatness from Evan Mobley, they need stability and consistency from Jarrett Allen. And if they’re not. And Donovan Mitchell, it goes without saying they need him to be MVP candidate. Donovan Mitchell, one of the engines of this offense. And if those things don’t happen consistently enough, the way that this team is constructed, the resources that they’ve put, the salary that they’ve committed to those guys, if those things don’t happen more consistently, if greatness becomes an outlier for Evan Mobley and Darius Garland and Jared Allen, where people are going nuts about this one game against the Minnesota Timberwolves because you’re just not used to seeing those kinds of things as much from those guys, then this team has problems. They’re in big, big trouble, and they’re not going to survive this era of the second apron with all of the different financial limitations, because if they’re not great consistently, DeAndre’s not stepping up. Dean Wade’s not going to go out and give you 20 when he’s healthy. You know, Craig Porter Jr. Has been impactful, but the kind of player that he is, he’s not picking up the scoring slack and the production that’s lacking from the other main components of this roster. So it’s like if they’re not, and I know it’s a burden, right, but welcome to stardom. But if they’re not great, this team doesn’t have a chance.
Ethan Sands: And I think we continue to see that every night. There’s flashes of greatness, but then continue to see the regression to the mean. It seems at this point where they go back to their ordinary play and in the next game. And I think that is part of the mental fortitude, the mental toughness that this Cavs team has lacked. And another area where I thought this would be a good test for them for their maturity was a majority of the Utah Jazz players are super young. Like you have Larry Markkanen, who’s of course 28 years old. He’s around the older of this crew. Yusuf Nerkens is 31 years old. Keonta George is 22 years old. Kyle Filipowski 22 years old Cody Williams 21 years old Isaiah Collier 21 years old Ace Bailey 19 years old. And we’re talking about a Cleveland Cavaliers team that has preached mental toughness since not just the summertime, but after the Indiana Pacers series when Max Strutz said in his end of season press conference, we weren’t tough enough mentally. We need to get tougher mentally. And this cast team and Donovan Mitchell has continuously reiterated this point and I asked him about it after the game in his post game scrum about is it frustrating? And he was short with me because I think it was pointed. He said yes, yes, we got to do something about it. And I think he’s not only getting tired of having to say the same message, but also saying we gotta be better. Kenny Atkinson said when I asked him about the pace, the, the three point shooting, the rebounding that we talked about with Jimmy, I asked after the game about these three areas and how they’re going to turn that tie and he said, just like I said before the game, we’re not defending well enough. Well, Kenny, if you said it before the game and it didn’t happen during the game, something else has to change. And I don’t know if it’s philosophy, I don’t know if it’s scheme. And to Jimmy’s point, it definitely is effortless, it’s definitely intensity and every given possession. But to Chris’s point, if the Cavs are going to continue to think that they’re better than they are, if they’re going to continue to rely on talent rather than work ethic, and sure they talk about work ethic behind the scenes. I think we’re going to see a team that doesn’t have the response to adversity that they’re hoping for, even if they have this trial of adversity this early on into the season when it comes playoff time, because it takes mental toughness and maturity to respond to that, when the lights are brighter, when the stakes are higher, when everything is more in your face, and to do this against a Utah Jazz team that is still learning the games of basketball and trying to figure out angles and picking roles and all these things, it was just telling to me the maturity level or lack thereof that this Cavs team still is dealing with.
Chris Fedor: I agree 100% and I don’t think it was just tonight against the Jazz I think for the majority of the first 41 games of the season, the Cavs have shown a troubling lack of basketball maturity on the court. And I think they’ve shown a troubling lack of mental maturity as well. And those are the things that people wonder about this team. I think there is a level of question about the talent on this team compared to last year. I think there is a level of question about the skill of this team and maybe the roster construction and the fit. And like, should you be missing Dean Wade as much as you do when he’s not out there? Like all those different things? How much can you rely on DeAndre Hunter? How much can you rely on Naquan Tomlin when he’s playing really, really hard but sometimes out of control? Like, how much can you rely. Can you rely on Lonzo Ball or is he just out of the rot? Now, Does Larry Nance Jr. Have a place or does he not? So I do think there are like basketball related questions with this team in terms of the depth, in terms of the talent, in terms of the skill, in terms of the roster composition and the fit. But I think the majority of questions with the Cavs are about their mental makeup and whether they’re ready to be the team that they say they’re ready to be. And through the first 41 games, they have absolutely no evidence that points to them being ready to be that team that they say they’re ready to be. And tonight against Utah was another troubling example of that. But, but it’s not just against Utah. Like I said, it’s been the majority of these first 41 games. Their play in the first 41 games halfway through the season has been alarming. That, that people around the NBA, players in the other locker room, coaches on the other team, scouts that are watching the Cavs, their first question is, what the hell is going on with this.
Jimmy Watkins: Team to zoom out on this particular loss. It’s not just that you lost to a bunch of 20 year olds who are tired and playing on the road. It’s, it’s the mature, the lack of maturity you show by doing that after one of your best win wins of the season, right? You beat the Timbals and it’s like, oh, we got this. Yeah, we got. We’ve seen that several times this year. Beat the Spurs. Nice, nice.
Chris Fedor: Chesty and high after one victory.
Jimmy Watkins: Beat the, beat the Spurs a couple of weeks ago, the Wizards are coming to town. Oh, we got this. You fall behind by 17. It’s the fricking Wizards, you go back and win that game. Okay, I guess maybe that’s part of the problem. You’ve. You’ve talent your way into some of these comebacks enough where you convince yourself. Yeah, see, it’s fine. We will figure it out eventually. But it just keeps happening, man. I feel for the people who live and die with this team and are desperately searching. The reactions to Saturday’s game were equally kind of funny to me. But yes, your point about Evan Mobley is a good one, Chris. Would anyone like to know how many 30 point games Evan Mobley has had this year? Superstar Evan Mobley. That’s a zero to boost egg. Not. Not the end all be all, but like not the number we thought we’d be having. 41 games into the season this point last season he had five 25 point games. This year he’s got two. Whatever the year of Evan Mobley, where is it? But to me it was like, okay, cool. They did look good in a very highly competitive, like for about, for long stretches of that game. That felt like a, a really high level atmosphere. Excuse me, does anyone know you still gave up 134 points? The main affliction that has been hurting this team the whole year didn’t get any better. The Timberwolves still absolutely lit you up from three in some ways. Yeah, it was a good win. It wasn’t this complete performance. Eureka. Complete performance. It was just. They overcame their. Their offense hit the ceiling and they overcame some of their biggest flaws. They didn’t correct them right. And then they come back. They don’t think they have to bring it tonight. That’s not serious. This is not a serious basketball team right now through 41 games. And whether it’s personnel or Cavs versus self. Cavs versus self. The Cavs are like, oh, and 100. Cavs versus self. Right now, Self is running up the score. Self is running up the score on the Cavs. And for you to think like this. Flip the switch conversation blows my mind. Blows my mind. Flip the switch to what? Flip the switch to what? Flip the switch to lose in the second round in five games mode. Oh, we’re cowering. We’re cowering. Don’t. Don’t let the Eastern conference encounter that level of Cavs basketball. Now, like, get serious. I harp a little bit too much on like post game messaging sometimes, but for Kenny to say like, oh, sorry, this stuff just happens in the NBA sometimes. What? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that’s true. And you can say that if you are like the same 5055 win team that you, that you have been when you’re fighting to stay out of the play in right now, which again, let’s be real, that’s what you are right now. You’re a play in team. It shouldn’t be that way on paper, but you are what your record and our eyes tell us and that’s what you are right now. The messaging has to change and I know it’s, it has to be different behind the scenes. I know it’s different behind the scenes, but that has to change too. We have to find some way to make, make these guys see there’s urgency to this. There is urgency. You can’t just fix it all. You can’t just fix it all in a week, in a month, whatever. You have done some really, really hard to repair damage to the DNA of this team and it’s a long crawl back to that. Not to mention your playoff road as it stands can be much harder than.
Ethan Sands: You thought it would be.
Jimmy Watkins: You’re probably gonna have to play at least two of the best teams in the east and whereas before I think we all just penciled it in for they’d be a one or a two seed and we’ll see what happens in the finals.
Ethan Sands: And to that point, Jimmy, you, you mentioned Evan Mobley, right? And, and the elite that we all thought he was going to make, the Cavs thought he was going to make as they gave him more of an offensive focal point role, then basically took it away after six games. But there’s always going to be the comparison between Evan Lowry, Markkanen, other players around the league. And one of the things that I noticed about Lowry, even when Evan Mobley, who’s seven foot tall and is the reigning defensive player of the year, was guarding him on the perimeter, Lowry didn’t care. Lowry was looking at the riff. Lowry was waiting for the ball and his. Before the ball even got into his shooting motion, he was ready to make a decision with the ball. Not looking for who to pass to, not looking to see where Evan was, not deciding whether or not he was going to take the shot. He knew he was going to take the shot. And we’ve continuously talked about Evan Mobley and his three point shot and its evolution and how it’s gotten better over the years and sometimes it’s flat, sometimes it’s too slow, all these other things. Lowry market knows exactly who he is. Sure, if he can, he can learn to get more into the painted area a little bit because of his size and his strength and all these Other things. But Lowry knows what his game is going to be night in and night out. Not to take away from Evan Mobley being on triple double watch, having nine rebounds, having eight assists and finishing the game with 15 points. But he was 1 of 4 from 3. He’s gotten blocked on a couple of different three point attempts and this is just not the confidence that you wanted to see from a player that was supposed to be stepping into this role for the Cleveland Cavaliers. And again, Donovan Mitchell looking around trying to figure out who is going to help him. And it’s getting nauseating talking about this topic at least once a week because Evan Mobley had this ideal for where he was supposed to be this season. Last year Donovan Mitchell continued to tell us this is his floor. This is what we expect from Evan Mogle, second team all NBA, All Star night in, night out. He’s regressed to the player that the Cavs can rely on defensively and offensively. Kenny Atkinson is kind of just throwing his hands up and figuring out what happens. Is he growing as a passer? Yes. Does that necessarily help everything in the offense, like Darius Garland passing the ball? No, it doesn’t. And I think the Cavs are in between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the offensive development of Evan Mobley and slowing the development and the progress of the overall team. Because you need him offensively to be who the Cavs know he can be or think he can be, but doesn’t show it on a nightly basis. And that goes back to Jimmy’s point of him not having 30 points in a game this season at all.
Chris Fedor: There’s a whole nother layer to this, too. As the season continues to go on, there’s not a lot of stuff that that looks positive for Kenny Atkinson from a coaching standpoint. And tonight’s another example of a black mark on that particular resume. Talk about not being ready to play, not having the players focused. The players basically put that on Kinniak. It’s after the game and I don’t think they went out and said, well, Kenny’s a problem, da da da da da. But if you listen to all of their comments, who is that pointed at? It’s all pointed at Kenny. It’s his job to get them ready. It’s his job to have them focused. It’s his job to have them locked in. It’s his job to give them the game plan and stuff. Kenny was great last year. He deserved coach of the year. He’s had a lot of things that have been out of his control throughout the course of the first half of this season. He obviously has been experimenting a lot when it comes to lineups and combinations because he said he was going to do that because he believes in that. And sometimes failure leads to discovery, and sometimes success leads to discovery. But when you have these kinds of losses against these caliber teams and you can’t motivate your team and you can’t get them to focus, whatever is causing that kind of problem, that speaks to coaching, right? That’s where you look. It’s not a great sign that 41 games into the season that when we talk about the problem that they had coming into this year still existing now, and the problem that they had at the end of November, still existing now, and the problem that they had at the end of December, still existing now, at some point you have to look at Kenny and say, hey, man, like, what are you doing That’s. That’s in your control. Because again, some of these things are outside of your control. What are you doing that’s in your control to remedy these things? And where’s the evidence that you have identified these problems and you have found the solution to these problems? And if you haven’t to this point found the solution, what does that say?
Jimmy Watkins: Goes back further than that, Ethan.
Chris Fedor: Sure. Playoffs.
Jimmy Watkins: Ethan mentioned earlier, we left last season with the. This mission of get mentally tougher. That can mean a lot of different things. But I think. I think handling one crumb of success against the Minnesota Timberwolves and then transferring that over to one of the five worst teams in the NBA, that would show me a heartbeat of mental toughness. You can’t even show me that. So back to May, we knew that was the mission. It’s January now. That’s still not happening. If Cavs fans took a shot for every time Kenny said they had the mental edge on us tonight, you’d be face down in an alley. It’s once a week. It’s once a week. He utters that phrase. And like, sometimes I’m like, do you know what you’re saying when you say that? You’re. Because you’re really hanging yourself out to dry when you say those things. And I. We’ve said this before. I think Kenny, he doesn’t say everything up there, but he is a little bit too honest sometimes. And right now, I mean, that’s plain and simple. The players can say whatever they want for the coach to say repeatedly. We don’t have the mental edge to start the game. Oftentimes, that’s what it was. Tonight what else is there? What else is there? I mean, sure, there’s schematics, there’s lineup adjustments, there’s player development. None of it matters. None of that matters. If I can’t get you to fulfill the baseline of care, that’s where we’re at.
Ethan Sands: And the guys in the locker room have kind of reiterated that saying, like, there’s always one quarter where it just gets away from us. They kind of made an excuse for themselves after the Minnesota game on Saturday, say, well, if it happens, we just got to get back on it quicker. And then Donovan Mitchell referenced it tonight, like, you had one bad quarter against Minnesota, you had one bad quarter the other night, you had one bad quarter. You continuously have these bad quarters. You’re playing catch up. And this goes back to something that we’ve said on this podcast for the last couple of weeks now. The Cavs last season were ahead, so when teams had that one quarter, the lead dwindled from 20 to 10, maybe five, and they didn’t have to necessarily work as hard. But now the Cavs are working hard to get back in the games, and then they also have to close them. That’s difficult. And I think this Cavs team, and to Jimmy’s point, Kenny Atkinson continues to feel like he’s struggling to put the words together and tell us what he really wants to say, or simply doesn’t have the words because he’s still trying to figure out himself. And to me, you need the right leaders, as Kenny Atkinson has said himself in this organization, you have the right player leaders. You feel like on the court. Well, I look around the league and I’m seeing Chris Finch calling out his guys and them responding. Anthony Edwards publicly calling out their players, Will Harding saying he’s tired of losing, tired of the excuses, tired of the mistakes, calling out his guys mid game and then doing it again post game publicly. It’s well documented. And those teams, even though the Utah Jazz are still actively tanking, are doing things the right way in instances when they want to. And I think that’s telling. And I’m concerned that Kenny Atkinson has kind of lost his way because we’ve heard the stories from Jared Allen and Caris Lavert, who were there in Brooklyn. Kenny Atkinson was crazy. When he was in Brooklyn, he was willing to call anything out, willing to say whatever was on his mind. He was holding them to a different standard of accountability, and it got him kicked out by Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and all of them.
Jimmy Watkins: Right?
Ethan Sands: So he took a stroll out west and went to Basically rejuvenated himself. Learned from Steve Kerr, learn from Ty Lue. Relax a little bit, enjoy the sun, go out to the beach, don’t pace for an hour in meetings like Steve Kerr said he used to. Now it feels like this version of Kenny Atkinson doesn’t know the right line to walk when it comes to how to handle this team, when it comes to intensity, effort. 48 minutes without crossing a line that he feels like he won’t be able to come back from. And I think coaching scared of losing your job is the best way to lose your job.
Chris Fedor: I don’t think he’s coaching scared of losing his job. I think he’s trying to figure out what is the right approach with this team. And I think it’s been a struggle organizationally coming into this year, and I just don’t know that they knew exactly how to handle this. This organization, for the most part.
Jimmy Watkins: Has.
Chris Fedor: Been the plucky underdog that was on this developmental curve that could take pride in some of these individual victories and where they’ve come from. Look, we were in the gutter and we got to this point. This is different. This is the most expensive roster in the NBA. There are big time expectations, there’s a ton of pressure. Kenny Atkinson has never coached a team like this. Never, never where it’s supposed to be basically finals or bust. There are people inside this organization, coaches on the staff, front office members that have never been a part of finals or bust. And it’s a different. There are players in this organization that have never been a part of finals or bust. 64 wins was a thing to them. That was an accomplishment to them. Right? Having three all Stars on the roster was an accomplishment to them. Having these career breakout years the way that Evan did and Darius Garland did last year, that was an accomplishment to them. Because for some of these guys, they had dealt with so much losing early in their career that just taking these steps, these incremental steps and having these little victories along the way, that was success. It’s so funny because everybody inside the organization gave me a hard time because they’re like, when are you going to ask the question, what does success look like? You ready to ask the question now? Because I wanted to get in their mind of what do they label success, how do they view that? And this year it’s very, very different. This year was the first time that they were kind of like, hey, look, we won 64 games. We were the number one seed in the Eastern Conference and what the heck did that get us? We got Bounced in the second round by Indiana in a series where every single game that we played against that team, we were favored. Where’d that get us? So why approach the regular season that same kind of way? You know what I mean? Like, I think the result of that series against Indiana correlated with what they did in the regular season, had them very, very confused about how to approach the regular season, how to view the regular season, and how to treat the messaging toward the regular season. And I think they’re still struggling with that because on one hand they’re like, hey, you know, the regular season, we experiment, we do this, we build these habits, but we don’t overreact to these losses. We don’t allow result based thinking. We need to still look at the process and all that kind of stuff. And then on the other side they’re like, well, these losses can’t happen. Like, what’s going on here? These, these results just aren’t good enough for us. So I just think it’s, I think it’s a struggle from, from the top of this organization on down of like, what does any of this mean and how informative is it and how much seriousness should we, we take toward the regular season? And I don’t think they know the answer to it. I don’t think they, they, they know what the right answer is to it, because I still think they’re trying to figure that out. But I think it all goes back to all the pressure, all the expectations. Being the hunted as opposed to the Hunters, no longer the plucky little underdogs. The team who was supposed to be favored to win the Eastern Conference, that’s all new territory. It’s new territory for Kenny. That’s new territory basically for everybody but Donovan Mitchell, right? The players are struggling, the coaches are struggling, and people inside this organization are struggling with how to handle that. And they’ve struggled with that since training camp started.
Jimmy Watkins: The Pacers broke this team over the course of five games. I don’t think we realize how deep that break went. That’s what I’m hearing right now. From what Chris is saying, it feels like this moment is a little bit too big for a little bit of everybody. And I hear what we’re saying about Kenny. Kenny’s in a unique situation for him. He’s been in a situation with parallels, like to parallels to this before. It didn’t go well. I’m not making that direct comparison right now because again, as we mentioned before, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving are two of the hardest people to coach on the earth. And this team is not that team. But there is some precedent here for every coaching criticism we could make of Kenny. And there is really no more bigger coaching criticism. Then you can’t get your team to repeatedly play hard for you. That’s just stating a fact. And it’s about the, the biggest indictment on a coach you could possibly make. How many coaches do we need to cycle through this roster before we decide that it’s a picker problem? Yeah, we’re not just talking about Kenny being in a unique situation. It’s the roster, it’s the organization. And like, they’ve already tried making what was a hard decision. Remember, like J.B. bickerstaff did. Well, that was another moment for the franchise where they were like, I mean, I guess we have to do this. But they got better literally every single year. They took a tangible step under J.B. bickerstaff and his last playoff exit was, was clouded by injuries. If, if he ever felt that, you know, that was an unjust firing, I wouldn’t blame him for that. By the way, look how it’s going for him right now with the Detroit Pistons. Clearly the best team in the Eastern Conference right now, regular season. I have questions about them in the playoffs. We’ll see. I think they’re going to make a move. But clearly he’s a very good coach. Clearly he knows exactly how to establish culture. Clearly he knows how to execute a vision for a team. He has waved goodbye to that guy. Okay, bring in the new guy. He’s a little bit easier. He’s a little bit more focused on offense. And guess what? Kenny Atkinson did a great job last year. Coach of the year. Overhauled your offense. Best offense of all time. Unlocked your most important player in ways that we had previously not seen. Took a roster wide burden off of things. It didn’t feel so heavy for the role players. Career high shooting percentage for you. Career high shooting percentage for you. Everyone’s playing with more confidence. Great. Then what happens? Then what happens? You want me to stretch a metaphor here? Career going from Timberwolves on Saturday to Utah Jazz on Monday. It was a lot like going from 2020, 25 Cavs to 2026 Cavs. 2024, 25 Cavs to 25, 26 Cavs. Does it not?
Chris Fedor: I was having this conversation with somebody before the game tonight and we were talking about big picture stuff related to the Cavs. And I think one of the worst things that happened to them last year in the, in the playoffs against Indiana is that they still had an Opportunity to say, yeah, but now there were some people in the organization, they were like, no, no, damn the excuses. Forget it. We just weren’t good enough. We gotta look in the mirror. But I just don’t know that it was an organizational thing because by the time we got closer to training camp, there was a lot of, yeah, but when, when the series with Indiana kept getting brought up, there was a lot of, yeah, but Darius. Yeah, but DeAndre. Yeah, but Evan. Yeah, but what would it have looked like if this, this, this and this. How would that series have played out if there wasn’t the end of game two? That happened? And it’s, it’s unfortunate because. Because I think there were enough like eye opening things in that series against Indiana that not enough people were willing to open their eyes to. But I was talking to somebody before the game and I said, I think what needs to happen with this organization is every single potential excuse that could be used has to be removed from the equation. And they need to have an eye opening loss that has no yeah buts. Can’t talk about the injuries, can’t talk about like other circumstances because I think if this organization is, is going to take that step and maybe it still happens, maybe they have that kind of epiphany type thing throughout the course of this year. It could happen. I don’t know. I can’t predict the future. But. But I think that’s the thing that, that needs to happen for them to really take the step that they need to take in. Going from good to great’s very, very hard. Bad to good. Everybody does that. Who doesn’t do that? Well, the Kings. But you know, going from good to great is a very, very difficult step because you’re already good and you’re like, hey, we’re good. If you’re Kobe Altman, you’re looking at this and you’re like, hey, we’re good. We have a lot of good things going on here. When it comes to this roster, it’s hard for me to want to break up good because I know what bad looks like. I’ve been a part of that. I was at the very depths of this rebuild and I had to pull us from the rubble and it took da da da da da da to get us to this point where we are good. So breaking up good is scary. You don’t know what’s on the other side. On the other side of that could be great or on the other side of that could be going back to bad. So going from good to great takes a Lot in the NBA. It takes a lot in team sports. And I think for. For the Cavs, they need. They need something. Like, I. I was talking to somebody before the game and I brought up the LeBron thing and. And for LeBron, like, he had to go to Miami and he had to fail, and he had to remove, like, all the potential qualifiers because in Cleveland, he was like, hey, my team st. Stinks. He didn’t say that publicly, but he could always be like, hey, my team stinks. My supporting cast isn’t good enough. We’re not going to get past Boston or Orlando or whoever it may be, because my. My number two guy is Adrinas Ilgauskis or Larry Hughes or, like, he needed to go to Miami and play with somebody that he believed in to the highest level in Dwyane Wade. He had to go to a team where he, like, almost handpicked his teammates and then have the kind of final series that he did where he just completely disappeared and he completely choked. And that was him having to look in the mirror and be like, wasn’t my teammates this time, wasn’t my coach this time. That was on me. Like, I just wasn’t good enough. And I think the Cavs, I don’t think they’ve had that moment yet, and I think they need that moment for the majority of people inside this organization to have, like, a different kind of perspective on what needs to happen for them to become the team that they ultimately want to be.
Jimmy Watkins: Bad news for you, buddy. At this rate, that moment’s on its way. It’s coming. You keep playing.
Chris Fedor: You write this and you keep playing.
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah.
Chris Fedor: And then if it does happen, like, who’s going to call it out? That’s the other thing. If it does happen, who’s calling it out?
Jimmy Watkins: When it’s that obvious, does it need to be called out?
Chris Fedor: I don’t know. It’s a fair question, I guess, when.
Jimmy Watkins: Depends on what it looks like. But I think you’ll know. I think everyone will collectively know when that happens. And maybe the person that needs to call it out is Kobe Altman. And maybe the way he does that is by moving people. But I would say think I would hope that someone speaks up, someone besides Kobe Altman speaks up before then.
Ethan Sands: I’m gonna go with what I was saying earlier. Kenny Atkinson has to be the one to call it out.
Chris Fedor: You might be right.
Ethan Sands: But, Chris, I think you made a very good and well said point about organizationally, top down, having to deal with this being a championship or bust finals or bust kind of scenario. Because it’s not just the people in the organization. The arena, they made a Cavalanche machine. They updated the arena itself. They put a club in the arena. Like they made the ushers wear suit jackets. Like there were expectations from everybody. There was growth from everybody. There was an idea that 64 wins, as Chris mentioned, was an accomplishment. And we continues to have this conversation of can you have a hangover from a 64 win season? You’re seeing it. You’re seeing a hangover. And to Jimmy’s point about breaking the Cleveland Cavaliers because of the Indiana Pacer series, I think we saw that because the Cleveland Cavaliers coming in the training camp and coming into the season adjusted their entire defensive orchestration to basically go up against the Indiana Pacers, who they weren’t going to play again, ever. You were never going to play that version of the Indiana Pacers ever again. And I think the Cavs as an organization continue to do this the season before. Hey, we lost to Boston. Let’s go get DeAndre Hunter, who would be perfect in the Boston Celtics series. Forget to mention, even if you would have played Boston, it’s not the exact same Boston team. Sure. Would it have helped potentially, you didn’t know if you were going to play them. Either way, you didn’t. And you ended up playing somebody that DeAndre Hunter being plugged in was worse in that situation than you might have liked. And I just think there are so many history artifacts of this Cavaliers organization that are haunting them that continue to resurface. And it was apparent. Let’s pull this back to the Utah Jazz game really quickly. Lowry Markkanen, a great player, right? George Niang, we’ve talked about this, Chris, him getting moved. How did that affect the leadership in the locker room? How did that take away arguably the most vocal leader, the fieriest guy on the court who was willing to argue and spit with fans on the court, right? Paris Lavert being gone. Kevin Love, how he left the remnants of that, the remembrance of that. There’s just so much history baked in because everybody’s like, oh, you can’t look at the past. You have to be in the present. The present is only today. And then you can’t really worry about the future because it’s not here yet. Well, everything’s really connected because we talk about Donovan Mitchell, his contract, his potential being here. He’s going to be 31 when he’s in his 11th year in the NBA, which he would have to have been on a supermax deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers or he’s somewhere else, right? Oh, pass. Right. The trade for Donovan Mitchell, it makes you better. It makes you get to the Eastern Conference semifinals. It makes you get out of the rubble of what you were of a franchise. Now you talk about what it left you and the players that you moved to try and accommodate Donovan Mitchell and yet it still hasn’t gotten you out of the Eastern Conference semifinals. There’s just so much depth that I feel like cannot go overlooked and over talked about because yes, there’s the nuances of the basketball games themselves, but it’s also the organization that has been built from the ground up and what has been left behind it in the decisions that they’ve been made over the years that that have changed the trajectory of the organization partially for the better, but also as we’ve talked about, there’s always gonna be these what if factors. And as I’ve said before on this podcast, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again. And Kobe Altman has talked about this in end of season press conferences for the last two years. It’s only year two of the core four. It’s only year three of the core four. Well, now it’s year four of the core four and it’s still not working, at least in the regular season. And whether or not the Cavs are willing to blow it up in the middle of a season is completely still uncertain. But I feel like we’re inching closer and closer to the reality of they don’t know if they have any other option, even though they have these second apron restrictions and all these things that they have to look into. It’s about what the future is, but also remembering the past moves that they’ve had to make that could change the trajectory. And what makes it so difficult to go away from players like Darius Garland, who you brought into this organization, organization and raised from arguably the worst player in the NBA to an all star level player, Evan Mobley, who still has a lot of promise. I just think there’s so much depth to everything that we’re talking about that it’s a difficult conversation for everybody in the organization because of what they thought was going to happen this year.
Chris Fedor: And then what is in saying all of that, I still think the east stinks. Like, you know, I keep going back to all of this stuff and I see the flaws. Everybody sees the flaws, right? And they haven’t played like a good team through the first 41 games and there are legitimate questions about their readiness for, for whether or not they can win a championship, whether this group can compete in the Eastern Conference. And then I keep going back to the reality of what is. What are they up against if they’re in the Western Conference? Curtains over no chance. But I have to put my basketball hat on too and say every freaking team in the Eastern Conference is deeply flawed. What does that all mean?
Ethan Sands: I don’t know at this point, to be honest with you.
Jimmy Watkins: Wouldn’t the worst possible thing be they scrape it together and make sort of a BS Conference finals run and like lose in semi competitive and then, yes, then we’re doing this again. Then we’re still like either way, at the end of the season, you want clarity either like really put it together and then. And show that whether it’s like a, like a legit conference finals run, seven game series, you’re on the precipice of the finals, actually make the finals or flame out in the second round again like that in between. Space is where it gets tricky and where frankly, it incentivizes certain people in the organization to sell more progress because that makes their job safer and easier. Blowing teams up is fricking hard and risky.
Chris Fedor: Yes.
Jimmy Watkins: And increases your chances of losing your job, keeping things together and saying, look at the Denver Nuggets. Look at the Oklahoma City Thunder. At first. Can we stop? You’re not those teams. We clearly you’re not those teams. But doing that pays a lot of money. It pays a lot of money, man. And I think to this point there has been legit merit to saying those things. But where we’re at right now, where it looks like this thing is headed, there’s no room for that at the, at the end of the season, again, if it goes how we say, it’s how we. How it looks like the current trajectory. If it follows the current trajectory, we’re done with that thing. If they turn it around and we end up in this muddy middle, it gets complicated.
Ethan Sands: And I think Chris said it really well in referencing conversations that he’s had aside from this podcast. They can’t have excuses when it comes to how it ends. They cannot look back and be like. Like today, even without just Dean Wade and Max Troops. Kenny Aganson says, well, I want to see what it’s like when we’re healthy.
Chris Fedor: You have most Dean. We would have been able to put him on marketing and then maybe marketing doesn’t disrupt our whole defense and then we don’t have to.
Ethan Sands: Yeah, exactly. So I just think they can’t have any reason for excuses. They can’t have the what if factor. And I think it’s difficult because tie this all back together because of a conversation we had at the Indiana Pacers series last year and at the Boston Celtics series as well. Donovan Mitchell is exerting himself to a new level every season. 41 games into the year, it feels like everything he does is hard. He’s going to have to get to the playoffs. He’s going to have to be healthy. He hasn’t been healthy in the playoffs the last two years with calf injuries and everything that’s been hindering him. And Kenny Atkinson continues to say, if we didn’t have Donovan Mitchell, where would we be? What would the record be? And I think the Cavs don’t want to know that. But the reality is, if they keep running him into the ground, they might be when the games matter most and he might not be available.
Chris Fedor: So that’s the thing.
Jimmy Watkins: This.
Chris Fedor: This was not supposed to be a one player roster. It was not. It was not supposed to be a heliocentric offense. That’s why you have super Max Mobley, right? That’s why you have running mate Darius Garland. And again, Darius’s first half of the season deserves some perspective in. In some context to it. But, you know, the way that this team was built, the things that. That people said about this team, it wasn’t supposed to be. We go as Donovan goes. It wasn’t supposed to be. Okay, Donovan’s off the floor. Hold on for dear life. There are some teams where it may. Look at Milwaukee, if Giannis is off the floor, they’re dead. You just have no chance, right? None. If Giannis is hurt for any extended amount of time, they’re done. They’re cooked. They’re probably cooked already, even with him. But every time he leaves the floor, it’s disaster for the Bucks. It shouldn’t be that way for the Cavs. Right? It shouldn’t. That’s not how this roster was supposed to be made up.
Ethan Sands: That’s.
Chris Fedor: You kidding me? No, but if you look at their numbers. Oh, my God. Are they alarming with Donovan on the floor, they have a net rating of 8.3, which, you know, great. It’s what you expect from somebody like Donovan Mitchell. With him off the floor, they have a net rating of negative 6.5. You. You can’t demand that much from one player the way that the Cavs have. No matter how you want to talk about this, no matter what you want to.
Jimmy Watkins: To.
Chris Fedor: To say and use whatever qualifiers you want to use, it should not be that way. It shouldn’t like, come on, that’s. That’s putting way too much on the shoulders of Donovan at a point in the season that that isn’t supposed to carry that much significance. At a point in the season where one player is not supposed to carry that much burden. Like no, shouldn’t have that much burden. He shouldn’t have that much responsibility. This roster was supposedly designed to take some of that away from him and it just, it just hasn’t happened. And those numbers specifically are pretty alarming.
Jimmy Watkins: Another it shouldn’t be Donovan Mitchell’s usage rate this year. 32.8%.
Ethan Sands: Man.
Jimmy Watkins: Donovan Mitchell’s usage rate his last year in Utah where he pseudo requested a trade. He didn’t technically request a trade, but he. We know what happened there. 32.9%. Those two numbers shouldn’t be so similar, particularly over the course of. I mean like that’s actually not even that different from what it’s been. He’s been over 30 every year with the Cavs. Last year was 30.9. That was the lowest since his rookie year. He’s always been a high usage player. This is to a certain extent Donovan Mitchell going to do Donovan Mitchell things right.
Chris Fedor: Yep.
Jimmy Watkins: But Donovan Mitchell, global thinker, good basketball mind. Part of the reason he signed up for this team long term, because he was thinking down the road over the course of the life of this contract, not only will these guys be more ready to support me in the playoffs, eventually I might be able to hand one of them the reigns. Or they could split it. Evan Moby could take the reign sometimes. Darius Garland could take the reign sometimes. That’s why we got three all stars here. Right. For it to be year four of Donovan Mitchell and his usage to look basically identical to the way it was on the Utah team that he needed to get out of to take the next step of his career. Oh, by the way, he hasn’t taken that step yet. These casts have gone no further than that Jazz team did. In fact, those Jazz teams actually were more competitive in certain second round playoff series. That’s a blaring bright red flag.
Chris Fedor: Ime Udoka said. Yeah, I took a 37 year old off the floor and we just completely crumbled. I mean Kenny could say that if he wanted to about the. The non Donovan minutes. He hasn’t yet. Maybe he needs to.
Ethan Sands: Yep. Accountability has been the word all season. We talked about the three areas that the Cavs need to improve the most. There’s probably two areas off the floor that they need to improve the most. Accountability, maturity. All right, with all that being said, that’ll wrap up today’s episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. But remember to become a CAVS insider and interact with Chris, me and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext. Sign up for a 14 day free trial or visit cleveland.comcavs and click on the blue bar at the top of the page. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. All you have to do is text the word stop. It’s easy, but we can tell you that the people who signed up stick around because this is the best way to get insider coverage on the Cav from me, Chris, and Jimmy. This isn’t just our podcast, it’s your podcast. And the only way to have your voice heard is through Subtext. Y’ all be safe. We out.