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Donovan Mitchell has been excellent from the outset in his first season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and now there is a single quantity that may, considerably, encapsulate simply how nice he is been. Eleven.
That’s the variety of 40-point video games Mitchell has tallied this season, with the most recent being a 42-point effort in opposition to the Knicks on Friday. That is a Cavaliers franchise report, eclipsing the ten such efforts that LeBron James recorded within the 2005-06 season.
You see the be aware on the finish of that tweet? That’s fairly loopy. Mitchell has performed 66 video games for the Cavs, and he already has as many 40-point video games as Kyrie Irving, who performed 381 video games in a Cleveland uniform.
It’s clearly a distinct state of affairs for Mitchell, who is not sharing scoring duties with LeBron as Irving did for 3 of the six seasons that tandem was in place. Not solely that, however the three years that Irving did play because the go-to man in Cleveland had been his first three years within the league. Mitchell is within the prime of his profession.
Still, this can be a extremely spectacular feat for Mitchell to perform in simply 66 video games. For the season, Mitchell is averaging 27.9 PPG, a quantity that Irving by no means got here near averaging in Cleveland and even LeBron solely topped 4 instances in 11 seasons.
It has certainly been in unbelievable begin to Mitchell’s Cleveland tenure, and it is not achieved but. The Cavs are trying like they will be the No. 4 seed within the East, and might be a really harmful crew within the playoffs. Mitchell does not shrink in massive video games, as he is one among solely 5 gamers to have ever scored at the very least 51 factors in a playoff recreation on two separate events.