{"id":547538,"date":"2026-01-19T21:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T21:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/547538\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T21:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T21:50:19","slug":"donovan-mitchell-deserved-to-be-nba-all-star-starter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/547538\/","title":{"rendered":"Donovan Mitchell deserved to be NBA All-Star starter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> haven\u2019t lived up to the lofty expectations they set coming into this season. That comes with consequences when it comes to individual accolades, as Donovan Mitchell has just found out.<\/p>\n

Mitchell was wrongly excluded from being an Eastern Conference All-Star starter despite three guards being chosen for the starting lineup. The starters are voted on by a mixture of fan vote (50%), player vote (25%), and a media panel (25%). They landed on an Eastern Conference starting five of Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown, Cade Cunningham, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.<\/p>\n

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Brunson, Maxey, and Brown are all worthy choices, but Mitchell has a good argument over every one of those players. Mitchell is averaging more points than Brunson, has been on\/off splits than Maxey and Brown, and he\u2019s scoring more efficiently than all three.<\/p>\n

Mitchell is having the best season of his career and should be recognized for doing so. He\u2019s averaging a career high in points while having the best efficient field goal percentage (58.3%) and true-shooting percentage (62.6%) of his career.<\/p>\n

This has resulted in the Cavs playing their best basketball with Mitchell on the court. Cleveland is winning the minutes he\u2019s playing by 7.1 points per 100 possessions<\/a> (86th percentile<\/a>) and lost the minutes he\u2019s off by 5.4 points per 100 possessions<\/a>. This has led to a differential of 12.5 points<\/a>, which puts Mitchell in the 95th percentile<\/a> for on\/off differential.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers have had many issues this season, but Mitchell isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n

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Mitchell will still make the All-Star game this season, but he should\u2019ve been voted an All-Star starter once again.<\/p>\n

The NBA All-Star game will be a United States vs. the world format. There will be two teams of US players and one of international players. The three teams will participate in a 12-minute round-robin game tournament. The two teams with the best records will play in a final game.<\/p>\n

Mitchell has mentioned that he wants to be on the world team due to his ties to Panama<\/a>. We\u2019ll see if those wishes are honored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Cavaliers haven\u2019t lived up to the lofty expectations they set coming into this season. That comes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2516,7,909,193,864,1409,123,288,78,6,1263],"class_list":{"0":"post-547538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-all-star-game","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-cade-cunningham","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-donovan-mitchell","13":"tag-eastern-conference","14":"tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","15":"tag-jalen-brunson","16":"tag-jaylen-brown","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-tyrese-maxey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115923978274162584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}