Yeah but the Pistons are in the East.

Yeah but they lost to the dynamo Pacers

They were an Achilles away from a title last year

Everything has an asterisk*

*maybe not everything

I agree, it’s hard to make the Conference Finals.

DMitchell’s seasons with the Jazz

17-18: Loses first round to the Harden/CP3 rockets (Finals team and Harden is MVP)

18-19: Loses first round again to Harden/CP3 rockets (Finals team)

19-20: Bubble playoffs, lose to Nuggets in first round after 7 games (Conf. Final team)

20-21: Beat the young Grizzlies squad, Loses to Clippers in 2nd round (Conf. Final team)

21-22: Lose to the Mavs (Conf. Finals team).

The only series I think they should have won were the Nuggets + (maaaybe) the Clippers series. Are we really faulting him for running into some great Western Conference teams?

What living in Detroit does to you I guess

You’re a dumbass

You put an asterisk on a KD chip? You put an asterisk on this here.

Can’t help but feel like McGrady and Lavine are a decent comparison for how far each can lead a team as the first option

for the title sure but dwight had a much better playoff resume in orlando than joel has for his career.

Dwight also beat an ascendant LeBron as the guy en route to a Finals appearance. Let’s not disrespect D12.

Hey at least Dwight was a huge part of that chip. The Lakers would not have won it without him.

Dwight led his team to the finals past MVP Bron as THE guy tho.

He didn’t even sign with them until like a month before the playoffs

Bro was 15 off the bench

he played horrendously for almost half the pistons series lol. i love spida but if anything he doesn’t get enough blame for how bad the cavs looked in some spots, all of it went to harden.

Ya I can understand that, him and Rudy really carried those Jazz teams for the most part. Mitchell has always been a great offensive player, but I’m of course glad he has this opportunity with Cleveland.

There was bubble mitchell year where it came down to a game 7 in and out three by Mike Conley, denver won then went onto WCFs. If one shot went down I think the Jazz had a very good shot at going to WCFs.

Then there was the Jazz 1 seed year where the Jazz had historic shooting but Mike Conley, bojan and Royce were too old to be good perimeter defenders - we know mitchell at his size expends his energy on offense so he has little left in tank to be an above average defender - and Jazz were exposed as a finesse team paper Tiger where the only defender you needed to gameplan for was Rudy and if you could get him switched onto the perimeter then there was no help defender left to defend the guy with the ball

Problem with Mitchell teams is he’s never been on a team with another above average defensive guard/small forward (1 or 3) since rubio his rookie year - and he himself is not a plus defender - and he’s a ball dominant short 6’1 2-guard- so he’s kinda hard to roster construct around. It’s possible but he needs a prime jrue holiday or Derrick white or Caruso next to him, as well as a rim protector/defensive frontcourt.

The only truly egregious time Mitchell missed out on the conference finals was 2021, other than that for the most part they just ran into better teams.

I think his defense can be consistently not good and I don’t think he’s played well in this postseason thus far, but the slander is kind of weird when he’s one of the few players who consistently score more in the playoffs than the regular season.

Like all time he’s 7th in ppg for the playoffs lol.

Key word “would”

He’s really struggled in the playoffs these past couple of years

The Cavs have struggled, but it’s rarely been Mitchell’s fault.

He was fine in that first 2023 series against the Knicks, but no one played well so he probably looked worse.

Again, the whole team struggled in 2024 but Mitchell went nuclear in the last few games of round one to push them past Orlando, then tried to carry them against the Celtics and ran out of steam and was injured by the end.

In 2025 they blitzed Miami before key injuries derailed the team against Indiana. Mitchell again almost carried the team to some victories but couldn’t finish.

This year is definitely a more mixed bag. Several mediocre to fine games, with a few explosive quarters here and there.

I’m hoping the Knicks hot shooting is cooled off by their break and the Cavs can carry some of their momentum forward.

“Played” usually means played in a game.

DeAndre Jordan has never played in a conference finals game.

How else would you define “played” besides playing?

There really should be some higher qualifications on this…….Like does T-Mac really deserve credit for achieving something Embiid hasn’t in this respect?

I really don’t think Embiid will be in that situation. He’ll be playing heavy minutes (when physically capable) or out of the league.

would still average 25 if he went in knowing he only had to play 7 minutes lol

Will embiid be able to walk in 5 years?

You are correct here and obviously Embiid is several levels better than DeAndre Jordan ever was. The closest comp to him is T-Mac but Embiid has won several first round series as the best player at least.

i think embiid is a much better player than yao. in terms of durability sure there are parallels but you know

It’s almost cliche to point it out, but that one really is on Ben imo. While not perfect, Joel still averaged 30 pts and 12.7 reb that series with a very solid game 7 performance. Ben only had 14 fg attempts in the final three games combined and was just a total head case.

Crazy how that 2019 G7 doesn’t come to mind. Tbf Kawhi was a man on a mission, he probably still gets the Raptors the win in overtime.

He was injured in that series too though. His body just can’t keep up with the demands of the playoffs.

Oh yeah, the Cavs were great but it’s easy to forget them because they always got bounced by the Bulls early. No fault for them, the Bulls were stacked.

Price and Daugherty were great. A discount Stockton-Malone and I mean that as a big compliment.

Edit: just looked it up, they got bounced in the first round 3-2 in both 88 and 89 by the Bulls lol. Then 3-2 loss in the first round in 90 by the Sixers. Though 2 years later they did get to the ECF losing in 6 to the dynasty Bulls. Then got swept in the 2nd round the following year by the Bulls.

God if I were a Cavs fan back then I would have hated Jordan with a passion. He did Cleveland dirtier than LeBron did Toronto.

They’re completely forgotten about, but are possibly some of MJ’s biggest victims. In 88 he dropped 45/5/5 with almost 5 stocks to win his first playoff series (this is what people mean when they say that Jordan couldn’t win a playoff series without Pippen, by the way, who averaged just over 10 points a game on sub-50% TS). The following year he put up 40/6/8 with 3.4 stocks and the “The Shot”–the only win-or-go-home buzzer beater in NBA playoff history–to put away a Cavs team with 57 wins and which might have had 5 of the 6 best players in the series.

You’re absolutely right.

He is, he’s an MVP after all. But not making it to the conference finals will always be a knock against him.