00:00Sam Quinn, CBS, covers the NBA for CBS, called this a bad contract for Donovan Mitchell.
00:06You knew that people were going to say it. You predicted it.
00:08I disagree. I'll tell you why here in a bit, but I want Lama to tell everybody why.
00:13Either you agree or disagree, or why people would say it.
00:15Give me the explanation about why people said this about Donovan Mitchell in the first place,
00:19and then I want to know whether you agree or disagree.
00:21Yeah, well, I remember it was John Hollinger a month ago when they were going over after the Cavs season,
00:27and they were going over the probability of what was going to happen with contracts like Donovan Mitchell's.
00:32And he's like, yeah, he's either going to wait a year and sign the massive five-year deal
00:38that's going to be like $350-plus million, or he's going to sign now and take the $68 million for
00:44four years.
00:45And he said the minute he signs either of those contracts, it'll be one of the worst, if not the
00:49worst, in the NBA.
00:50So we were kind of expecting it just based on we also saw what happened with Jalen Brown.
00:56And I think Jalen Brown is somebody I'd probably rather have than Donovan Mitchell.
01:01And I know that's controversial in some circles.
01:03Maybe it isn't, considering Donovan had a very up-and-down postseason, too.
01:08But, you know, we are in a world where unless you're a top-five player in the league,
01:14all these contracts are going to get ripped now because of this apron,
01:17because the teams are now starting to operate differently than they ever have.
01:21Yeah, and you got those two guys.
01:23And I'm not going to rip on those guys because those guys might end up being right.
01:27So it's not about me getting mad at national media or anything.
01:30Obviously, I disagree because I'm a Cavs fan.
01:32I don't want the Cavs to do well, and Donovan Mitchell is the best Cavs player they have right now,
01:35right?
01:36Okay.
01:36So now that I got my emotions out of the way, my theory is if you don't win a championship,
01:42because part of what Sam Quinn writes in his tweet here,
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01:53Part of what he says is that if you don't win a championship, it becomes a bad contract.
01:57Aren't all the contracts bad if you don't win a championship?
01:59That means all of them are.
02:01And maybe that's, you know, it's Twitter, so maybe he would say, yeah, of course they're all bad.
02:05But you are in a situation...
02:07Like Jonathan Kaminga, what is it?
02:08Two years, $20 million that was on the table from the Lakers here.
02:12Not a bad contract.
02:13Jared Allen, not a bad contract.
02:15These aren't 1% type players.
02:18So 1% type players, like Donovan is, 1% type players get $272 million contracts.
02:25And we'll get more as we go into next offseason.
02:29Well, if you don't win a championship with any of these guys, anybody who doesn't, it's a bad contract.
02:33All of Chris Paul's contracts, all considered bad now.
02:37Well, he's got Chris Brown on the mind after last night, boy.
02:38But CP3 is one of the best ever.
02:40Every contract's bad.
02:41But every Joel Embiid, every James Harden, every Bar...
02:45Like, so, okay, obviously team building around these numbers are going to get more and more difficult.
02:51Yes.
02:51And I think there is an acknowledgement that probably in the CBA they went too far.
02:56They went too far to prevent the super teams.
02:58And now they got the parity that everybody supposedly wanted at the time.
03:03But what did you have to give up to get it?
03:05Well, you can't keep your teams together.
03:07Even if you built them the organic way, like the Boston Celtics did, where they drafted two guys...
03:13Oklahoma City's going to have tough conversations.
03:15Oh, absolutely.
03:16Absolutely.
03:17So, you know, this is really hard.
03:19I guess my question is, what is the alternative for the Cavs?
03:23How do they get a player better than Donovan Mitchell?
03:25Let them go.
03:26Trade them and not get as many first-round picks back as what you gave up for them.
03:29Because you made the trade under a different CBA?
03:32Yeah, and if you did that, what do we think a team that is...
03:36I'm being sarcastic, everybody.
03:37What do we think a team that is built around, right now, at his current level, Evan Mobley...
03:43All of a sudden, Evan Mobley was your second or third best player.
03:46Now he's your best player.
03:48A playing team.
03:48A playing team, right?
03:49I mean, you're probably not that good.
03:51Do you see how many teams in the East are trying now?
03:53Like, forget about whether they've upgraded or whatever.
03:56But there are like 11 teams that are trying to, quote, compete in the Eastern Conference.
04:03And where are the Cavs then if they dealt Donovan Mitchell?
04:06And probably pennies on the dollar after you just saw the Jalen Brown trade.
04:09Exactly.
04:10So, you're basically forced to double down.
04:13There are people out there who think that even trading for him was a mistake.
04:17I haven't.
04:18But there are those who do.
04:20You had no choice but to double down on this.
04:22Well, and by the way, how's the team that we traded with?
04:25How are they doing with their rebuild?
04:27They're in year...
04:27Still mired in whatever their rebuild, yeah.
04:29Which, it looked like they were going to find a way out.
04:31Now the guys that they traded for are gone and the whole thing.
04:34They're still mired in it.
04:35So, if you don't have...
04:36But that's what it is.
04:37This is why...
04:37I do kind of like the new CBA.
04:39I know that it's made things significantly tougher.
04:42And I think they probably did go overboard.
04:44But I like it because we're having the same conversations that we do with the NFL.
04:48Now, the difference to me in the NFL is that, to me, the cap is not a really hard cap
04:52in the NFL.
04:53If you see some of the things that they can do with the cap.
04:55And I find it to be a giant excuse to just get rid of veterans and find cheaper labor.
04:59However, I think that's probably what we're going to find with the rest of the NBA.
05:03We're probably going to price some veterans out.
05:04I don't know if we're going to find guys.
05:06Vince Carter's a legend.
05:08So, that's not it.
05:08But here's the funny thing about that.
05:10Michael Conley's been 20 years in.
05:12This is no disrespect to Michael Conley.
05:13But if a guy starts now and could have himself a Mike Conley career, is he going to be around
05:19in 20 years?
05:19Are they going to go, hmm, we're going to find someone a lot cheaper here?
05:22But that's the funny thing about the NBA.
05:23Say what you want about James Harden and everybody's down on Harden because of the way it looked in the
05:28Knicks series.
05:28Well, congratulations.
05:29The Knicks made a lot of the San Antonio Spurs look really bad, too.
05:32They made everybody look bad.
05:33And they made all the Cavs look bad.
05:35You know, Harden, Kawhi, LeBron.
05:39These older players are still better than so many of the younger players.
05:42Like, literally better than 80% of the league.
05:45Well, because they're grown men.
05:46And they know what they're doing.
05:47And they know what sets to run.
05:49They're not just out there AAU balling, going to college for one year, where they'll just let you do anything.
05:54Because it is a talent thing, and more than likely.
05:56And I know I'm casting a broad brush over here.
05:58But you're not disagreeing with me and calling me stupid.
06:00And then by the time you get to around 27 years old, you see what's going on in the NBA.
06:05You know what moves you're going to do.
06:06You know how to study tape at a legitimate level.
06:09Like, there is a growth that happens in the NBA.
06:11And it's part of the reason why, yeah, they are not going to move on from Evan Mobley.
06:16And they think that anybody who's bringing up, trading away Evan Mobley is a total idiot.
06:21That's the way that they're going to operate.
06:22Now, we'll find out who's right in the end.
06:24But, damn it, that's part of the reason.
06:26Because guys are able to blossom.
06:28I do think that this might be the downturn of it.
06:31Where, if you have two guys on your roster taking up 60% of your cap space, where else are
06:37you going to find guys to fill out your roster?
06:39So, you're going to start going into the dregs and seeing whether or not you can hide them.
06:43Well, in football, when you've got 22 guys out there, it's a little easier to kind of hide some of
06:47the places that you're in if you're really good at it.
06:49But, when you've only got five dudes out there, ten overall, it's very difficult.
06:54Yeah, very difficult.
06:55I just want to know, from the people that hate the state that the Cavs are in, and they saw
07:02that money that Donovan got.
07:04You know, the reactions, it's fine if you're like, oh boy.
07:09Man, the way that escalates over $70 million in that last year.
07:12Okay, we're all going through the same exercise.
07:15At the same time, like, when you look at, when you really examine where the Cavs are, what is your
07:23answer?
07:23Like, where do you think they could go to make this better without taking a massive step back?
07:30And, the other thing I saw, so many people were telling me that he has not been good in the
07:34playoffs.
07:35They're like, he's totally...
07:37You're saying Donovan, they're saying that?
07:39Yeah, Donovan Mitchell.
07:40Like, are we not watching the same playoff games where, I mean, a couple of years ago, he, with the
07:47groin injury, he had put the entire team on his back.
07:50He was hobbling towards the finish while still putting up masterful performances.
07:56Are these national people or are these fans?
07:58No, no, the local. I, Cavs fans.
07:59And that's where I get to...
08:00Cavs fans act like he's terrible in the playoffs.
08:01Because it's an unfair comparison.
08:03We saw two of the best do it in the playoffs.
08:05I mean, that's why we're about to have a whole conversation about Kyrie Irving versus Donovan Mitchell.
08:10Because people remember some of the games that he put up in the NBA Finals against Golden State.
08:15Some of the big shots, the biggest shot, arguably, in NBA history that was ever hit against Golden State.
08:20So, we remember those big moments.
08:22We remember guys at their best.
08:24And LeBron and those guys...
08:25I mean, Kyrie's got a lot of playoff duds over the last how many years, too.
08:27You are right.
08:28But we remember their memories to the people who are at their very best.
08:31We usually don't remember...
08:32Unless they're a notorious figure, we don't remember them at their worst.
08:35And we're judging Donovan in real time.
08:38So, it's unfair that Donovan Mitchell has to play a game.
08:43And I'm just comparing him in my head to what I remember of great games of LeBron, Kevin Love, Kyrie
08:49Irving, etc., etc.
08:51I mean, that's an unfair thing.
08:52But that's what he's got to go through.
08:53It's the same thing I've said about LeBron and Michael Jordan.
08:55So, for Donovan, I hang my hat on the 39.5.
09:00What he's capable of.
09:01What else can you help him with?
09:02Because he's not a 6'8 monster.
09:04So, I still need to put guys around him.
09:06Yeah, I mean, how many guys in the league can author up some of his virtuoso playoff performances that he's
09:13done?
09:13And, by the way, with the Cavs, doesn't he have a 50-point game?
09:16Yes.
09:17Doesn't he have, like, 540-point games?
09:18When I go back to what you just said about Utah that I think is the most salient point ever,
09:23you look at where the Utah Jazz are.
09:25The best way forward is not taking a step back and moving on from Donovan Mitchell or moving on from
09:30a lot of this.
09:31To break it up, to bust it up.
09:33It's about moving forward.
09:34And so, I think they had to do what they had to do, which is double down on a player.
09:39That's not a mistake.
09:40He's a top 10 player in the NBA, give or take.
09:44I know that he was 9th and 11th, according to the ringer.
09:48Top 15 is still going to be top 2% of the league, top 5% of the league.
09:52I mean, this is a quality 1% type player.
09:56And the guys that are better than him?
09:59Okay, yeah, we'd all like to have Jokic.
10:01We'd all like to have Luka, who, by the way, is having trouble advancing his team.
10:07Hey, Shea Gilders-Alexander, okay, we'd all love to have him.
10:10But tell me what your list is, and then tell me, how do you go get those guys?
10:14You can't.
10:14So, what are you supposed to do?
10:16All the teams that don't have those guys should just quit.
10:19We should just stop playing basketball.
10:21We should relegate.
10:22We should go away for five years.
10:24Like, there's always, when Beyond is not going anywhere, we're always going to be chasing those elite players.
10:30You don't have LeBron anymore.
10:31That was the cheat code.
10:33That was easy.
10:33Okay, it's not easy anymore.
10:35You don't have LeBron.
10:35If he get them back, he's not going to be a cheat code anymore.
10:37No, no, no, he's not at that level.
10:40So, to everybody who is so down and out on the Cavs situation, tell me what they should do.
10:46Tell me right now.
10:47And if your answer is, oh, we should rebuild, go look at when they own their next draft pick.
10:51Like, you better get amazing draft capital, which, of course, if you're trading Donovan Mitchell to a contender,
10:57that's not going to turn into good draft picks.
10:59Those are going to be in the 20s.
11:01What is that doing in today's NBA?
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