The Cleveland Cavaliers are getting an epic season out of Donovan Mitchell. The former Utah Jazz guard is on track for an All-NBA berth in his first year in Cleveland, with a 71-point game under his belt. It’s hard for Cavs fans to have expected more from him.
In the midst of his great season, it’s natural to look around the league at the success of his peers. Has Mitchell ascended to be the best shooting guard in the league? It’s not simply a fun question to ask; it matters for scenarios like contract extensions, trades, etc as the Cavs evaluate their players against the rest of the league.
Do the Cleveland Cavaliers have the league’s best shooting guard?
While there are plenty of outlets that will rank players — we will do so during the offseason — one of the best is the Dunc’d On Basketball Podcast. Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux are some of the sharpest basketball minds in the business, and their rankings come with copious amounts of research, thought and insight.
That doesn’t mean they are obviously right, especially since they will often disagree with one another, but their rankings should hold weight. Recently, they posted a podcast episode (here, although it’s behind a paywall) ranking the league’s shooting guards; Donovan Mitchell was not number one.
That honor, instead, went to Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns, in a tier by himself above Mitchell. The Suns’ guard missed an extended period of time this year due to injury, but in the games he has played he has averaged a career-best 27.6 points per game on 49.2 percent shooting from the field.
Why was Booker ranked ahead of Mitchell? The podcast hosts gave two main reasons. Let’s dig into what they said and decide whether or not their analysis was sound.
Reason No. 1 Devin Booker was ranked ahead of Mitchell
The first reason that Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux gave for ranking Devin Booker at the top of the shooting guard rankings is that Booker is a more malleable player than Donovan Mitchell; he can fit on more teams and in more lineups than Mitchell.
Donovan Mitchell is just 6’1″ tall, four inches shorter than Booker. The Suns’ guard has more size and more strength than Mitchell, allowing him to competently defend 2s and even some 3s in certain lineups. Mitchell has been a defensive liability to this point in his career, although he has been at his best this season.
On offense, both are gifted on-ball scorers, and both have the shooting to be off-ball. Booker’s size makes him an easy fit alongside another point guard; Mitchell’s playmaking (like Booker’s) isn’t strong enough to be the full-time point guard, as Duncan pointed out, so you ideally want to pair him with another point guard; Mike Conley and Darius Garland being the last two such options. That locks Mitchell’s team into a small backcourt and puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the lineup to be stocked with defenders.
Is this a fair critique? On the one hand, it’s dealing with facts; Booker is taller and heavier than Mitchell, giving him a natural advantage. Yet at the same time, Booker’s defensive metrics have not been stellar; he has had a negative Defensive Box Plus-Minus (DBPM) in every season of his career but one. Booker is not a good defender.
Yet his size does help, and is a point in his favor. Mitchell’s length offers upside on defense, but it hasn’t manifested with any level of consistency for Mitchell thus far in his career. No NBA team with a backcourt as small as the Cavaliers’ has won the NBA title in the modern era; Cleveland could certainly buck that trend, but Mitchell’s size is an impediment to how you build a team around him.
Reason No. 2 Devin Booker was ranked ahead of Donovan Mitchell
The second primary reason that Duncan and Leroux gave for their ordering of the top shooting guards was that Devin Booker has had more postseason success. That’s another undeniable fact; Booker has been to the NBA Finals, while Mitchell topped out in the second round.
There are two primary ways to apply that fact. The first is that Booker had a better team around him two seasons ago than Mitchell ever did in Utah, and that is probably true. Chris Paul, Mikal Bridges and Deandre Ayton formed a better top-4 than Mitchell had in Utah. It also shouldn’t have much bearing on ranking the two players.
The second is to conclude that there is a weakness in Mitchell’s game that Booker does not have, that has led to that difference in playoff success. That may be true, pointing to the earlier discussion about backcourt size and defense, but the results don’t support that thesis.
First, Booker has only two playoff runs to his name despite being in the league for two seasons longer than Mitchell. In those 32 games Booker averaged 26.1 points per game, shot 35.6 percent from 3-point range and have a 0.3 total Box Plus-Minus (BPM), largely on account of a -1.2 DBPM. 32 games is a relatively small sample, but it’s all we have to go off of, and Duncan and Leroux felt it was an impactful enough sample to apply.
What about Mitchell? He made the playoffs in his rookie season and every year since, so he was thrown in the fire much earlier than Booker. In his 39 playoff games (seven more than Booker) he has averaged 28.3 points per game on 36.9 percent shooting from deep, and his BPM is a stout 4.0, with a -0.2 DBPM.
Mitchell’s 4.0 BPM in the playoffs ranks 19th in the entire NBA since he entered the league (min 10 games and 20 minutes per game). Players like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Booker’s teammate Chris Paul all rank above him. Where does Booker rank? 101st, tied with Bobby Portis and Max Strus.
Saying that Mitchell’s size and defensive limitations could make him a worse postseason player is a reasonable argument, but that hasn’t actually been the case, and especially not compared to Devin Booker. Booker has never faced a playoff series without Mikal Bridges beside him, or Deandre Ayton manning the middle, and he has mostly had Chris Paul in the lineup as well. Booker has played very well in the playoffs, but his poor defense has been a major issue, no matter than he has a slight height advantage over Mitchell.
Final Verdict on ranking Devin Booker and Donovan Mitchell
So what’s the final verdict? Both Duncan and Leroux chose to slot Mitchell below Devin Booker and above James Harden. Their point about Mitchell’s size and lineup versatility is absolutely correct, and on an average NBA team it would be a problem more than Booker’s limitations. Booker would fit more easily on more teams, is an incredible offensive player, and he has earned his top ranking, just above Mitchell. I agree with Duncan and Lerouz there.
The good news for the Cavaliers is that Mitchell isn’t playing on an average team; he is playing for this team, and they have perhaps the best situation in the league for fitting Mitchell in. Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley are a fearsome frontcourt combination, and they can help make up for Mitchell’s size in a way most other teams can’t (shouts to Milwaukee and Memphis for also falling into this camp).
Booker will face this season’s playoffs with a better offensive co-star than he has ever had in Kevin Durant, but without the defensive security blanket of Mikal Bridges. What will his impact look like now? Similarly, Mitchell will get to battle in the postseason with the best defensive infrastructure of his career and see if he can push higher than ever before.
Both Donovan Mitchell and Devin Booker are incredibly talented, exceptionally prolific, and interestingly similar in how they play basketball. Their battle for the top of the shooting guard rankings should go on for a long time, and Mitchell has plenty of opportunity to prove he belongs on the top of the list.