Donovan Mitchell is definitely not an easy person to get along with. Seeing how he had such a quarrel with Rudy Gobert back then, and then both left Utah, and last season with head coach J.B. Bickerstaff’s public disagreements forced the team to replace Bickerstaff. Of course, new coach Kenny Atkinson knows that he must first get Mitchell, so that his position can be long-term. So not long after he took office, he made an appointment with Brother Mi Yi to have lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
Atkinson and Mitchell had almost no interaction before. Only before the 2017 draft, Mitchell went to practice with the Nets. At that time, Atkinson was still the head coach of the Nets, but that was all. When some coaches meet with such big players, they will bring a laptop or tablet and use a video to describe their tactical ideas, but Atkinson did not. He did not tell what he wanted to do first, but asked Mitchell What do you think the team can do to get to the next level? A month ago, the Cavaliers were eliminated by the Celtics 4-1 in the second round of the playoffs. Although Mitchell missed the last two games due to a calf injury, it was obvious that the overall strength of the Cavaliers was not as good as the Celtics. . Atkinson wanted to know what Mitchell was thinking.
The lunch meeting quickly turned into an informal tactics meeting. Atkinson said: “I asked him first, let’s discuss the team lineup, and you tell me your evaluation of everyone. It turned out that it was like I was in a meeting with the coach. It was amazing. His knowledge was super broad. He analyzed everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, which opened my eyes. Then we started talking about tactics and what we should do in the future. His basketball IQ was really off the charts, and we hit it off immediately, and we immediately reached an agreement on tactics. consensus.”
Mitchell also agreed that the two immediately established a tacit understanding: “I originally just came to eat and chat, but I didn’t expect that we would talk about tactics right away, and I was very happy. We put this person here, and then put that person Over there, we can do whatever we want, we run through all the tactics.”
Last season was difficult for the Cavaliers, from Mitchell’s in-and-out play to the decline of third-year player Evan Mobley and the departure of second-choice backcourt player Darius Garland. and center Jarrett Allen ‘s unexpected injury were all reasons, but the most important thing was that Mitchell publicly questioned Bickerstaff’s coaching, which caused divisions within the team. After a 35-16 start, the team failed to win. Ended the regular season with 13 wins and 18 losses.
This season, Atkinson asked most of the main players to reduce their playing time and switch to a ten-man rotation. As a result, he achieved the highest scoring and offensive efficiency in the league (ranked first since the beginning of the season, and was overtaken by the Knicks this week), defensive efficiency It is also ranked in the top ten in the league, and is the only three teams with a net efficiency exceeding 10 (the other two teams are the Thunder and Celtics). Mitchell’s playing time was a career-low 31.7 points, four minutes less than the previous two years. Atkinson deliberately did this to keep him healthy and enter the playoffs. Despite the reduction in playing time, Spider-Man’s performance is still at a star level, still averaging 24.3 points/4.9 rebounds/4.1 assists. If averaged per 36 minutes, his points and rebounds are higher than last season.
