{"id":612035,"date":"2026-04-17T02:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612035\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T02:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:42:07","slug":"donovan-mitchell-reveals-why-james-harden-gives-cavs-best-nba-championship-shot-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612035\/","title":{"rendered":"Donovan Mitchell reveals why James Harden gives Cavs best NBA championship shot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donovan Mitchell reveals why James Harden gives Cavs best NBA championship shot<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If long waits are the topic in conversations, James Harden<\/a> and an NBA championship cannot be overlooked. He has been in great squads like the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>, Houston Rockets<\/a>, and Brooklyn Nets<\/a> but the Larry O’Brien trophy has not been in his cards quite yet. The Beard now embarks on another postseason with a new squad, the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>, but things are looking different this time around. Donovan Mitchell<\/a> and the Cavs know they have their best shot at winning because of the veteran.<\/p>\n

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Why Cavs think their best NBA championship shot lies with Harden<\/p>\n

When the bigger picture is looked at, the Cavs have regressed and this would usually mean their chances of winning the NBA championship goes along with that too. They only won 52 games after coming off a 64-win campaign in 2025. Not to mention, their offensive rating sank from 121.7 to 119.2. The same goes for their defensive rating which also took a hit from 112.2 to 115.1.<\/p>\n

Despite all of these, Donovan Mitchell posits<\/a> that this will be their best shot at finally hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy. What makes him believe that? It is none other than the arrival of James Harden during the NBA trade deadline, via Sam Amick of The Athletic.<\/a><\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t want to say it\u2019s his last shot, or my last shot, either. But it\u2019s our best shot. There\u2019s a reason why he chose here. He sees it. We know what we\u2019ve got to do. Now, how do we do it? Him and I are gonna be fine. We\u2019re gonna stagger our minutes. We\u2019re gonna do all that, and then in crunch time we all know,” the Cavs superstar declared.<\/p>\n

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Harden has been a great leader for the Cavs<\/a> since he got there. He introduced playthroughs which the Mitchell-squad were not doing before. It is also the same practice tool that the 2016 Cavs led by LeBron James<\/a> used to win the franchise’s sole NBA championship. The veteran has also matured off the court well and is a great role model for his teammates.<\/p>\n

Mitchell sort of still had concerns entering the postseason. He worries about letting the other Cavs pop off because he and Harden can have the ball too much. The veteran eased his superstar’s mind which showed a great deal of emotional growth.<\/p>\n

“How are we going to get Sam (Merrill involved)? How we gonna get J.A. (Jarrett Allen<\/a>), Evan (Mobley<\/a>), Max (Strus<\/a>), Keon, Dennis, everybody, around to gel and fit, you know what I mean? And the best part about (Harden) was that when you have a guy come in, and he\u2019s like \u2018Don, this is your team, bro.\u2019 Then you go do your thing. You feel comfortable to be like, \u2018Alright, bet,” Mitchell said of Harden.<\/p>\n

Harden did help aid all of these concerns. The Cavs ended the season with 28.3 assists per game which ranks them eighth in all of the NBA. They also generate an astounding 0.3 assists per possession which puts them in the upper echelon of well-distributed offenses. Mitchell knows that a lot of the Cavs’ woes disappeared after the trade deadline and it’s because Harden was there to help.<\/p>\n

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More Cavs News:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donovan Mitchell reveals why James Harden gives Cavs best NBA championship shot originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5997,17603,23659,7220,1173,73844,297273,7896,170096,590,36999,5548,85,297274],"class_list":{"0":"post-612035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-donovan-mitchell","13":"tag-houston-rockets","14":"tag-james-harden","15":"tag-jarrett-allen","16":"tag-larry-o39brien","17":"tag-lebron-james","18":"tag-mobley","19":"tag-nba","20":"tag-nba-championship","21":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-strus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}