The Utah Jazz made the difficult decision to trade away Donovan Mitchell last offseason after it became clear that Mitchell no longer wanted to be a member of the Utah Jazz. The Jazz got a great haul in return for the trade, shipping Mitchell to the Cleveland Cavaliers in exchange for a whole host of first-round draft picks, as well as Lauri Markkanen, Collin Sexton, and Ochai Agbaji.
Most people believed Mitchell would remain in Cleveland for the next few seasons at least before either leaving the team in free agency or getting traded to his preferred free-agent destination a year early; New York. The New York Knicks were the team that was likeliest to land Mitchell. He's from the area, he has connections to the franchise, and they're an up-and-coming team. The road map to him arriving in New York by way of Cleveland was pretty much set in stone.
Or so we thought. According to Spence Checketts of ESPN700 (via Larry Brown Sports) has seemingly lit the fire of speculation by implying that Los Angeles and not New York, was the preferred landing spot of Mitchell.
Checketts goes on to say;
“This came from a source that more often than not is correct and knows Donovan. He believes Donovan wants Los Angeles. He thinks he’s going to go try to be a Clipper or a Laker when LeBron is gone … didn’t come from nobody, I’ll just put it that way.”
If this is true, then it may not only shake up things in the West with the return of Mitchell to the conference, but it could also give the Cavaliers bargaining power in any trade involving Mitchell, an idea that didn't exist when the preferred destination was just the Knicks.
Clearly the next few weeks and months will be very interesting in deed.