It is time.
For the last three seasons, the Cleveland Cavaliers have enjoyed the services of All-NBA guard Donovan Mitchell, a player who has brought joy, points and winning to The Land. This season, after committing long-term to the franchise, he has been a down-ballot MVP candidate as the leading scorer on the East's best team.
Bringing Mitchell to Cleveland did not come easily, however, and the Cavaliers paid a hefty price to do so. Part of that cost was in players, with Lauri Markkanen blossoming in Utah and both Collin Sexton and Ochai Agbaji carving out roles elsewhere.
Part of the cost, however, was in draft picks -- five full seasons of them. As compensation for Donovan Mitchell the Cavaliers sent the Utah Jazz control over five consecutive drafts, including three outright unprotected first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps.
The Cavaliers start paying now
The upcoming 2025 draft is the beginning of that stretch, and so over the next five years the Cavaliers will be paying the cost. The reason that the Jazz initially deferred the picks was to open up the possibility that Donovan Mitchell would decide to leave the team, something that was a very real possibility until he signed an extension this past summer.
With Mitchell committed the team coalesced around him and under the leadership of new head coach Kenny Atkinson and came out of the gates a new team, winning their first 15 games and currently in a commanding position to secure the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
That will mean that the first draft pick paid to the Jazz will be at the very end of the first round, currently on track to be the 29th pick. That's essentially a best-case scenario for Cleveland, an affirmation of the trade and nearly the lowest possible cost they could have paid this season.
What's interesting, however, is that the Jazz have not held onto the picks -- at least, not in full. They made an intriguing trade with the Phoenix Suns earlier this season, trading three first-round picks to Phoenix in exchange for the Suns' unprotected 2031 first-round pick.
In each of 2025, 2027 and 2029 the Jazz currently own first-round picks from both the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Minnesota Timberwolves, the latter as a result of the Rudy Gobert trade they made the same offseasona s the Mitchell deal.
The Jazz therefore traded to the Suns the worst of their own, the Wolves' and the Cavs' first-round picks in all three of those years. The Suns will get three picks, but the Jazz are betting on none of the picks conveyed being anywhere near the top half of the first round.
The Cavaliers' pick is going to the Suns
With the Cavaliers holding a 58-14 record with 10 games to go, they cannot fall to any worse than 58-24, which is more wins than the Timberwolves can reach this season. As such, it is now official that the Cavaliers' first-round pick will go not to Utah but to the Phoenix Suns this year.
The Suns need all of the help that they can get to maintain their limping "contender" around Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, and they have nailed a few late first-round picks in recent years (whenever they haven't traded them away). This season they will be sending a likely lottery pick to the Houston Rockets.
The Suns will most likely be sitting at home in May scouting late first-round draft prospects, while the Cleveland Cavaliers will be fighting to win the Eastern Conference playoffs. That's a tradeoff the Cavs will take every time.