The Cleveland Cavaliers were active in making changes to their roster for the upcoming season. With those changes the Cavs are considered a Top-10 team in the NBA. This is according to the latest power rankings from Zach Harper appearing on The Athletic.
Cleveland checks in at ninth, barely cracking the Top-10. This is a slight drop from where they were at the end of the regular season as they were sixth at the time. The Cavs current ranking has them in what is considered a “Tier 3 Playoff Hopeful“. While this seems a bit harsh for a team that has clearly improved this offseason, moving on from players with no future in Cleveland.
Being able to add Max Strus, Georges Niang, and Ty Jerome while retaining Caris LeVert seems like a solid step in the right direction for the Cavs. These additions were complimented by Harper, but that did not stop him from asking a very important question about Cleveland’s future.
Have we hit a wall with Donovan Mitchell teams?
As with every team on this power ranking, Harper raises what he refers to as a pressing question. This is in regards to the postseason performance of teams with Donovan Mitchell on their roster.
But we keep seeing a pattern with Mitchell’s teams when they get to the playoffs. They just come up short in ways where he could have been better, and things look so disjointed as they lose.
Zach Harper’s pressing question about the Cavs
This is a tough, but fair question. The way that Cleveland crumbled against the Knicks this past postseason is very concerning. While everything does not fall on Mitchell here and this seems to be more of a coincidence than anything. This is a big time case of rushing to judgment considering Mitchell has all of one season in Cleveland to his name. If this was a recurring pattern year-after-year with the Cavs it would be one thing, but it simply isn’t currently.
Cleveland should be in position to make a deeper run this season. Having a young team get to the playoffs and lose is valuable experience. They should be able to draw on the lessons from that experience to improve moving forward. If things do not work out after this season the question posed by Harper does become more valid. But at the current moment in time, asking this question is very much premature.
