Donovan Mitchell’s trade to the Cavaliers caught many by surprise, so much so that some refuse to accept his arrival in Ohio as being the natural course of things. There have been many who have wanted to insinuate that the Jazz accepted Cleveland’s offer as a kind of punishment for the Knicks, both for their refusal to include certain conditions in the negotiations and for actions such as the fact that several New York executives appeared in Game 1 between Salt Lake City and the Mavericks. However, from Utah they have wanted to clear this hypothesis as soon as possible.
This has been assured by Zach Lowe, a journalist from ESPN, on his own podcast: “Emotions can play a role in this, but from the Jazz they assure me that, although the incident of the game against Dallas did bother them, they are mature people and they are not going to base a decision of this type on something that happened months ago. They believe they have reached the best deal possible.”
The truth is that, although no hypothesis can be ruled out 100%, it does not seem likely that a movement of this style will be carried out for reasons such as those suggested. The executives who come to have so much decision-making power in multimillion-dollar franchises are there for a reason, and it’s hard to believe that they act so childishly when it comes to negotiating a transfer that will begin to define the process of rebuilding your team.
Even if a potential deal with the Knicks is considered to be better for the Jazz, that doesn’t necessarily imply that rancor was the cause of the deal. The history of the league is full of transfers of dubious quality, but always taken by managers who believed they were doing the best for their team, not going through a childish tantrum. Or so it is more logical to believe.
(Cover photo: Chris Gardner/Getty Images)
