{"id":610340,"date":"2026-02-18T20:57:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/610340\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T20:57:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:57:17","slug":"donovan-mitchell-agrees-with-james-harden-loyalty-in-sports-is-overrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/610340\/","title":{"rendered":"Donovan Mitchell agrees with James Harden, loyalty in sports is overrated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> guard James Harden made headlines after his home debut by saying loyalty is overrated after joining his fourth different franchise since 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s basketball, the whole quote on quote loyalty thing is, I think it\u2019s overrated,\u201d Harden said last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is a business at the end of the day, and it\u2019s a lot of money involved and a lot of decisions that have to be made. If a player isn\u2019t producing, or if you don\u2019t see him in your future, you know, if the front office, some of them have to do a job and want to keep their job. So they feel like they got to do what\u2019s best keep their job, and they trade players.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donovan Mitchell was asked about those comments after practice on Wednesday and agreed with Harden. Loyalty in sports isn\u2019t what it ideally should be, but many factors go into why it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as a sports fan, and as a diehard Mets fan, would I love for Jacob deGrom to still be here? Yeah,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cYou know, certain situations, it\u2019s not always going [to work out]. It\u2019s not always like that. For him to be honest with you guys and give that answer, I respect that. This is a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there are competiting interest at play, even internally.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t blame a guy for wanting to maximize his opportunity, maximize his life-changing money for his family,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cOn the flip side, it\u2019s that weird side in sports where it\u2019s like, this is a business, but there\u2019s also the concept of, \u2018Hey, I want to be here forever.\u2019 There\u2019s always that with every athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mitchell has seen how this dynamic works, even if he personally hasn\u2019t changed teams as much as Harden has.<\/p>\n

There were reports that Mitchell was open to being traded<\/a> from the Utah Jazz<\/a> back in 2022. It was also clear that this was something that the Jazz felt was in their best interest after they weren\u2019t able to advance out of the second round with their team built around Mitchell and Rudy Gobert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis season wasn\u2019t very much fun this year,\u201d Jazz CEO Danny Ainge said a few months before the team traded Mitchell<\/a>. \u201cThis draft wasn\u2019t fun. Free agency wasn\u2019t very much fun. You\u2019re over the tax, no draft picks, and our team loses in the first round. It wasn\u2019t fun for us. We want it to be fun for our fans and our players, but we just haven\u2019t had much flexibility to do anything over the last little while.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether or not this was ultimately the right move for Utah is up for debate. What isn\u2019t, is the fact that they felt that their core wasn\u2019t good enough to win, and it was time to move on.<\/p>\n

In many instances, it\u2019s in the team\u2019s and the player\u2019s best interest to open up a new chapter. And in the NBA, things can change quickly, as Darius Garland found out.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look at my situation in Utah,\u201d Mitchell said, \u201cyou go from being the one seed and the next thing you know (he snaps), it\u2019s like that. It just happens. With DG, it was the same thing. The Jimmy Butler situation, the Dame [Lillard] situation, there\u2019s other situations. It\u2019s so fragile. Everything is so fragile. One day could be great, the next day (snaps again) can be like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of Harden\u2019s exits have been messy and seemingly not as mutually beneficial as you\u2019d ideally like. That\u2019s part of Harden\u2019s complicated legacy<\/a> and the business of sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know his exact experience,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cAll I know, is pretty much what you guys know. But I do know there\u2019s certain things that can kind of skew that. \u2026 Not just speaking of him, but as a whole in sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I really respect the fact that he was honest. I think a lot of guys relate to that. I think it also gives fans a unique insight on like, hey, there\u2019s so much love here for sure, but there\u2019s also things that can get in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleveland Cavaliers guard James Harden made headlines after his home debut by saying loyalty is overrated after joining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,147,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-610340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-news","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116093639586443931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610340","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=610340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}