Basketball <\/p>\n
The modern NBA equivalency is this: a supermax-contracted star traded for purely financial reasons. We\u2019ve seen a series of players move on for ostensibly non-basketball reasons over the past few years, the latest being Boston Celtics<\/a> star Jaylen Brown\u2019s shocking trade to the Philadelphia 76ers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Celtics general manager Brad Stevens stated clearly that he wasn\u2019t comfortable, in this age of the hardest of soft-caps, with two players making 70% of the salary cap. He has a point. It\u2019s simply too difficult to build the requisite depth around your tentpole stars required to make deep playoff runs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown, for all of his obvious ability<\/a>, isn\u2019t Jayson Tatum, so he had to go. Paying multiple max salaries is now a Sixers problem.<\/p>\n Brown, though, isn\u2019t the last player \u2014 and the Celtics are not the last team \u2014 to face this issue.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> extended star guard Donovan Mitchell to the tune of $273 million through to 2031<\/a>, when Mitchell will be 34 years old. On its surface, this is a success. Mitchell wasn\u2019t drafted to Cleveland, nor did he choose to be traded there. Having now signed two extensions, it\u2019s a testament to what that organisation has built\u00a0that a perennial All-NBA talent has chosen to stay in Ohio.<\/p>\n Mitchell\u2019s an elite scorer, but his lack of size, defense and playmaking requires particular talents around him. Cleveland has that with the elite passing of James Harden and the dynamic rim protection of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley. That group, though, creates its own cap crunch. Allen\u2019s $28 million annual deal is a reasonable rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 36-year-old Harden, a free agent after declining his player option, will surely require a bag to come back. Their role players \u2014 Max Strus, Sam Merrill, Dennis Schroder, et al \u2014 are all on market value deals. Most pertinently, Mobley\u2019s current $50 million per season deal runs out in 2027, at which point he\u2019ll likely sign his own \u2018super-max\u2019 extension. That\u2019s when the Cavs will face their own cap realities.<\/p>\n Mitchell and Mobley are neither as talented nor as accomplished as the Tatum\/Brown duo were. If Boston doesn\u2019t feel that committing two-thirds of the cap to that pair was prudent, it\u2019s unlikely that allocating a similar percentage to Mitchell\/Mobely will be either. Given Mobley\u2019s age, size and versatility, he will be the player Cleveland chooses to build around of the two.<\/p>\n So, assuming Mitchell gets moved at some point through his extended deal, what could the Cavs expect to get for him? At a generously listed 6-foot-2, Mitchell is small, and the aforementioned lack of playmaking or defense make hm a touch one-dimensional. Small guards rarely age well, especially ones as reliant on athleticism as Mitchell. His shooting should see him age better than other high-scoring mighty-mites like Allen Iverson, Calvin Murphy and Lou Hudson. It\u2019s extremely unlikely that Mitchell will provide anywhere near the production to match an expected $70-75 million annual salary<\/a> in the last couple of years of the deal.<\/p>\nBasketball Will Donovan Mitchell be the next star player traded?<\/h2>\n