The Athletic<\/a> released their latest player poll, conducted over All-Star weekend. In the survey, they asked, \u201cWho is the best player in the NBA?\u201d to which Mitchell received the third most votes, behind only Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and tied with Luka Doncic.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
That would make Mitchell not only the best player in the Eastern Conference according to his peers, but also the best American player in the league.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s one catch. And it\u2019s a big one.<\/p>\n
The Athletic only polled 18 players for this specific question. Jokic received six votes, SGA three, while Luka and Mitchell received two.<\/p>\n
So who voted for Mitchell?<\/p>\n
Well\u2026 Mitchell voted for himself. Telling The Athletic\u2019s Joe Vardon, \u201cCome on, Joe, I gotta say me, always.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other vote? Mitchell\u2019s teammate Jaylon Tyson, who was also at All-Star weekend competing in the Rising Stars challenge. I have to respect a teammate who rides or dies for the other.<\/p>\n
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This means we can\u2019t really take anything from this poll. Something tells me the voters were a little biased.<\/p>\n
Either way, Mitchell deserves some recognition. He\u2019s averaging 29 points and 5.9 assists per game while carrying the Cavaliers through a rough start to the season. Now he\u2019s catapulting his team back into the mix as Eastern Conference contenders and is meshing nicely with his new backcourt partner, James Harden.<\/p>\n
The Athletic polled more than 30 players who were in Los Angeles. The full anonymous results of that poll can be found here<\/a>. Other questions from the survey include \u201cWho has the best player podcast?\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s the biggest problem facing the league today?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donovan Mitchell is having the best season of his career. If the rest of the league hasn\u2019t noticed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,75,193,864,1409,517,2286,251,368,6,253,28784,209],"class_list":["post-608946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-boston-celtics","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-eastern-conference","tag-james","tag-jaylon-tyson","tag-los-angeles","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-player-poll","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116088998967434824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608946","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=608946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}