Cavaliers owner confident Donovan Mitchell will sign extension to stay in Cleveland

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Cleveland Cavaliers v Chicago Bulls

Donovan Mitchell is one of the biggest dominoes that could fall in free agency this summer.

The Cavaliers All-Star guard is eligible for an extension of up to four years, $200.4 million. If he chooses not to sign an extension with Cleveland, it has to consider trading him (Mitchell has a player option for 2025-26 that nobody expects he will pick up). Teams would be lined up to trade for the elite scorer.

Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is confident Mitchell will sign to stay with the Cavaliers, he told Tom Withers of the Associated Press.

“We’ve been talking to him, sure, for the last couple of years about extending this contract,” Gilbert told Withers. “We think he will extend. I think if you listen to him talk, he loves the city.

“He loves the situation in Cleveland because our players are very young and we’re just kind of putting the core together that he’s clearly the biggest part of.”

Mitchell signed a five-year max extension with the Jazz back in 2020, with a fifth-year player option. This new extension would build off that deal — the Cavaliers offered him a max extension last summer but the most they could offer at the time was $55 million less than what can be put on the table this summer. While some Cavaliers fans became nervous when Mitchell turned that first offer down — and some Knicks fans became optimistic — Mitchell was never going to sign an extension last summer for financial reasons. This summer, things get real.

Adding to the buzz, Cleveland was not on top of Mitchell’s list when he pushed for a trade out of Utah in 2022, his native New York or Miami were the targets Cleveland stepped up with the best offer and presented Mitchell with the opportunity to become the leading scorer and face of a promising young team That team won 51 games last season but then got manhandled by the Knicks in the first round of the playoffs This season the Cavaliers sit fourth in the East on a 49-win pace with a top-five defense, but the Cavaliers have stumbled of late (having lost 4-of-5) and they are not striking fear into other teams in the East Mitchell has missed time…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/cavaliers-owner-confident-donovan-mitchell-213836327.html

Author : NBC Sports

Publish date : 2024-03-28 21:38:36

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