How much should the Miami Heat do to bring back Davion Mitchell? | Five on the Floor

How much should the Miami Heat do to bring back Davion Mitchell? | Five on the Floor

Welcome to the latest episode of Five on the Floor, the Five Reason Sports Network. Thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app on Apple, Apple Podcast, on Android, Spotify, or the Five Reasons YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to Off the Floor. Links right here in the description. You know the deal at this point. Two bucks 99 cents per month. Click on that link, you’ll bypass the $1 Apple upcharge. You can cancel at any time, so really very little risk. us for less than a cup of coffee. You can basically vent and vent with other Heat fans who are always venting even in the middle of the night. 10 channels including our draft and transaction channels, host updates, our main thing chat is the main one. Other NBA stuff, we even do non hoops on there. So check it out. It’s off the floor link right here in the description. Also, subscribe to Prize Pix. Use the code 5 fiv $50 to play right away. Prize Pix, official fantasy sponsor of the Five Reason Sports Network. Just sign up. They’re handing you $50. Go to prizepix.com. Use the code fiv. And yes, it is legal in the state of Florida, no matter what that book in Hollywood says. Have a good one. Now, today’s [Music] [Applause] episode luxurious heat nation. Yeah. Mercy go down the [ __ ] on the floor ride for my dogs. Here’s a thing. You can check the score. Hustle hard. Couple stars. Bubble frog kept the floor plan. Got it all. Y’all seen the block with one hand and we trust have the guts. We’re here to bring the heat. Y’all can hang it up. Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Sander, Alex Toledo, Brady Hawk, and others from the Five Reason Sports Network. Also, make sure to subscribe to Off the Floor for the most heat anywhere. All right, welcome back to five on the floor. Here’s today’s floor plan. I’m Ethan Skolnick. And follow me, Ethan J. Skolick on Five Sports. I got Brady Hawk. You can follow me at Bradyhawk 305. We’ve been pumping out the episodes lately. So, make sure that you check them out. Our offseason series, internal external. So, we’re doing an internal episode today and a bunch of external episodes. One on John Morant, one on Kevin Durant. We will do more. Uh, and also we did an episode Alex and I did on Jimmy Butler. Uh, and whether or not we look at uh the Heat’s decision, not the trade, but their decision whether or not to extend him. uh whether or not we felt differently after Jimmy’s advanced the second round, even if the stats are very similar to what he had in Miami. But today, we’re gonna talk about somebody they got for Jimmy Butler, DaVon Mitchell, who’s a restricted free agent after this season. And honestly, he was the prize of that trade for the Heat. He played the best of the three guys that they got. Kyle Anderson contributed, maybe more than some expected. Andrew Wiggins had his moments, although none in the postseason, and he was injured a lot. And DaVon Mitchell really stood out. I mean, when the Heat put up anything about DaVon Mitchell, every post afterwards was keep him, keep him, keep him, keep him, keep him. Universal uh love for this particular player because of his defense, because of his effort, there’s a personality there and the offense was much better than advertised. And again, this is a former lottery pick, so this is not a player without potential. He is a restricted free agent at the end of the season. We are fully expecting the Heat to extend a qualifi qualifying offer to him which gives him the them the right to match any offer that’s out there. One thing that Greg Sander mentioned on the Kevin Durant podcast is if they went after someone like Durant, they might be a little bit more limited in terms of what they could match with DaVon. But again, so many things out there right now that it’s hard to know exactly what position they’ll be in except except Raid that I expect uh I don’t expect a huge offer and and from from another team and a couple reasons for that. One is uh teams are positioning for 2026, but also the book’s out now that pretty much after you leave the Heat, if you’re a developmental player, which DaVon even as a f former first round pick kind of was, you don’t really get the same production outside of the Miami system. We’ve seen that with Caleb Martin now, Gabe Vincent, some of that’s injury related, guys like Rodney McGrder, on and on and on, Tyler Johnson, etc. Uh that you just don’t get the production outside. Max Sterus is kind of the one guy who fell into a good situation and has produced close to what he produced in Miami. Pretty similar, but in most cases, um, it doesn’t happen. Uh, we’ll just start here before we get into what DaVon could be and how they they should proceed and kind of where this goes. Your feeling on this and you’ve stated before, you keep Dave on Mitchell, right? 100%. If you have the ability to, which I do believe I’ve said before, you mentioned the qualifying offer. I think they’re going to be in range where they will be able to keep him. Uh I mentioned before like the year that Gabe was coming off, I keep using him as kind of that baseline, but like the year he was coming off and the number he got. Uh I don’t expect DaVon to get more than what Gabe got, which was if I’m not mistaken around like 9 million, I think a year. It was something around that range. Uh so I I I think 100% you do keep them. You mentioned about other teams in the book being out. It’s funny because I feel like Max is the exception because when you’re just like a specialist that could step into a role like a specific thing, it makes sense that a guy could step out into specifically to another good team and that’s the other part of this uh why it makes sense. So number one, you have to be good at one specific thing and be able to fit a role on a good team. So that limits about what half the league, three4s of the league of trying to go after DBon Mitchell. It just doesn’t make sense for most teams. Uh, so it leaves you with a lot of the good teams and a lot of the good teams it feels like at this stage are not going to have a lot of cap space. Uh, so it kind of puts kind of the ball back to Miami’s court and I do believe he wants to be here. Uh, and I do believe Miami wants him back, but it just comes with uh, kind of what we talked about I feel like the last time we did a podcast together where we were talking about it’s more so the guys around DaVon where you could put DaVon in the right role with Miami. But with that aside, no matter what case that ends up being, you keep that guy. You keep your energy guy. You keep the guy that that had a uh career year offensively that that just shot the ball extremely well that played with with such energy that you mentioned like being the prize possession of that trade. He was the only guy that like had moments in a Heat jersey like where let’s say if the three guys that were put in that trade were were gone tomorrow and weren’t in a Heat jersey anymore. He’s probably the only guy that you’re like you could specifically point out moments like that playing game and stuff and it’s not a shot at the other guy. I mean, Kyle Anderson hitting two of those those like weird threes in the corner in the playing game he could bring up. Wiggins having a couple regular season moments, but they’re just so limited that DaVon felt like it was happening so consistently in such a short span of time. Uh, and to be honest, he’s the only one that really uh did anything in the playoff setting that that he stepped up and elevated his game in that setting. So, just as a whole, uh, it just makes sense to bring him back. I I just think they they have to, you know, get him at the right number. We we’ll go to all this the total numbers in a second, but it was pretty much every game he was giving you 10 to 12 points and five to eight assists and making his threes and also you mentioned making big shots down the stretch. Not afraid to take those shots and he made some and you got to give him credit for that. You know Shane Badier told me something once and it’s something that you hit on. He’s like I’m only useful on a good team. Like I’m only useful on a good team. You say, “You put me on a bad team and you don’t want me there because then I got to dribble. I got to do all these other things.” He’s like, “But you plug me in a good team, like I’ll figure out where I fit and I’ll make things easier for other guys in a variety of ways.” Shane did that defensively, but also with his shooting, obviously a different position than DaVon, but DaVon is that kind of player. Like, I don’t see him having value on a bad team. I I don’t know what the point would be. But on a good team, yes. Now the question is whether he’s a starting point guard on a good team. I’m not sure about that. But he played, you know, he’s playing 37 minutes regularly for the Heat off the bench. So it doesn’t really matter if he starts or not. I think for them ideally if they had a creator playing next to to hero, like a true creator, someone that had to be accounted for offensively consistently, then DaVon Mitchell is your third guard would be ideal. Um but we’ll have to see if the Heat can get that kind of player. Um, let me go through some of the numbers here just to compare. Um, he actually averaged more points as a rookie with Sacramento, but again, bad team. So, he started 19 games there and he averaged 11.5 points. This year with Miami, once he got to Miami and he was with Toronto for 44 games, he started half of them. That was not a good team this year. He averaged 6.3 points and 4.6 assists. He came to Miami. He averaged 10.3 points, 5.3 assists, uh 1.7 turnovers, so pretty close to a 3 to1 assist to turnover ratio, which you’ll certainly take. Obviously made Rosier completely, you know, sheld Rosier completely when he came because the differences were so stark. But the biggest thing and and again, he started 15 games in the regular season, uh played 30 total, averaged 32 minutes, and that’s he was averaging 25 in Toronto. The year before he averages 15 in Sacramento. His career kind of stalled in Sacramento. He had the first season where he averaged 11.5 points. But as that team got better, he played fewer minutes even though he played a lot of games. But here’s the big thing, and this is kind of what because the defense we’re going to talk about, and we’ll get to that on the other side of this, but the the shooting splits, um, 7.7 attempts, 50.4% that included 3.1 attempts per game from three, 45% 44.7. Uh, and he shot 70% from the line. Not his strength. Doesn’t get there a lot, but the shooting was excellent. Now, I just I guess I’m just trying to figure out, and we’ve talked about this before, but as you decide what how to go forward with him, like is the form there? Like I I don’t I when I watched him shoot, I really couldn’t figure out why he’d been a bad shooter before. Sometimes it’s some guys it’s really obvious. Yeah. There’s not like a true hitch in the jumper or the base or anything. like he has a wide base that there’s there’s fluidity to it. Uh he gets off his feet which I think is important. Like he’s not like a flatfooted shooter. Like there’s all the things there. Uh I just think number one when I talk about like thriving on a good team like when you’re playing in Sacramento like they’re not helping off as much because there’s nobody help on off on two if that makes sense. like there’s not somebody that they’re like helping off DaVon so they could overly help on this guy uh or Toronto as well like yes maybe Scotty or different guys but like to the level of that that was happening with Miami where he’s having total open threes like he he had such a rhythm early in his in his tenure where there was so many open looks and even toward the end of it like let’s be honest like even in the playoffs and everything the scattering report never really shifted they weren’t like okay well we need to fly out of DaVon Mitchell uh across the board he had decent looks and and he just continued to kind of uh force them himself I think honestly more than the shooting. I know the shooting is important. 45% from three is insane. Like that in in itself is crazy, but he did it for himself because of the fact he was such a great finisher. And that was I keep going back to that is that was kind of the number one thing that stood out to me was like his physicality on his drives. The way he could kind of just bully anybody that was in front of him, put a shoulder into their chest and he has the ability to play off that. Usually when you see like those uh like football player type players that come in and just throw their body around and try to finish around the rim, they’re not great finishers. He has such great finesse around there and such great control. Uh and he was just a really good finisher. I was just looking at some of the numbers a second ago. Less than 10 feet from the basket. He ended up shooting 56% on on a little over three attempts a game. Uh that’s crazy especially for a guy he doesn’t settle for a lot of those like in between floaters or you know those like weird shots in between. He is just straight threes and layups and he’ll occasionally take like a bail out step back mid-range that he has the ability to hit sometimes, but like he it’s very under control offensive game. And I think that’s what just completely stands out. But but to answer your question, I don’t really see a problem with the form. And I think what stands out even more is sometimes you’ll see like with with shooters like himself, you’re either like a spot-up shooter or a pull-up shooter. You’re not really both. You look at some of the numbers from the season, the regular season, 39% on catch and shoot threes and 41% on pull-up threes. And he had one attempt a game on pull-ups and two attempts a game on catch and shoot. But that type of split that you’re kind of pretty leveled on either way of shooting. And yes, they’re probably both decently open looks no matter what. But that’s important, too, because it just shows a little bit of the versatility with his shot as well. So, uh, yeah, he was a bit of a surprise offensively. I don’t really see I mean I guess the question for you is like do do you see a case where there’s going to be natural aggression right like he’s not going to be a 45% from three shooter moving forward so there’s going to be natural aggression but does it matter like if he dips down to 38% is he he’s still a functional player that’s going to be closing a lot of games. Yeah I I think if as long as he’s in that 35 to 38% range from three I think you’re okay. The thing that impressed me the most about not just the finishing, which is I think one of the huge things that distinguished him from Rosir and their idea in training camp. It’s funny, DaVon executed it, which was threes and layups. U Rosir couldn’t execute it. DaVon executed it. So, credit to him for that. Uh, but the biggest thing that got that got me was he he was able to consistently get a foot in the paint. It’s not just the finishing, it’s it’s the the opening, how he would get in there and then make good decisions when he got in there. For the most part, there were a couple of games that it got a little wonky, but like for the most part, he’d get in the paint and then know what to do. We even saw Kyle Lowry towards the end with Miami, who’s a Hall of Fame, borderline Hall of Fame player, and he would often get in the paint, not know where to go, like and just like just stand there and just sort of wheel around. DaVon made quicker decisions than Kyle when he got in the paint. So, I I give him credit for that. I do think there’s more growth in sort of the nuances of his game. Do I think he’ll ever be a consistent 15 plus point scorer? No. I I don’t I don’t see it at his size. I think if you got from him in his minutes, if you got the equivalent of again 10 to 12 points a game, but making the big shots, uh more of a Derrick Fischer type role, I guess, to go back a little bit. I I although I think he’s a better defender than Fischer even ever was. Um but I think if you get that kind of player, I mean look, Mario Chmer’s made a living for a long time in the NBA. I think Mario had more scoring chops than than DaVon has. But uh you know, Mario was more of a a play the passing lanes type defender. He was pretty good at the point of attack, but he wasn’t elite at the point of attack. Mario will get mad at me for saying that, but I he was better at the steals, all that kind of stuff. Sometimes Dwayne would get on him for gambling. Uh DaVon is just sound in all ways and and on the other side of this I want to get to where you you go defensively with him. So we’re going to bring back a segment that we had during the regular season and it was called defending the house and this is from our friends over at Cousins Moving. And now it’s time for our defending the house segment sponsored by our friends over at the Real Estate Shop. You can find them at real estatefl.com. That’s with two P’s and an E. real estatehopfl.com or at the Fort Lauderdale Realtor on Instagram. This is Javier Glaciius and Amanda Martin. They help buyers and sellers in real estate. They’re nimble and protective of their clients. They service the entire tri county area. That’s Miami Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties with a proven onmarket strategy. The real estate shop sellers earn the most money in the shortest time frame because Amanda and Javier have a deep understanding of the local market. So check them out. Again, it’s @thefortale realtor on Instagram, real estatefl.com, or give them a call at 954-2689812. And now, who defended the house? Well, DaVon didn’t, but I want to get into a little bit more specifics on this cuz we we’ve talked about the combination of him and Tyler and kind of where that goes. We’ve talked about DaVon blowing up the screens and, you know, just not allowing himself to be bullied. Um I I just I guess I asked this question and we don’t need to get into a whole bunch of depth on this because then we’ve covered it so much. But he’s small, right? He’s small. He’s six feet. Okay. The league is trending bigger. They’re trending bigger in the front court. The Heat have tried to match that with Wade. Uh excuse me with Wade with Wear and Bam. Um you know, we don’t know who’s going to play the three next year. It could be Wiggins. Obviously, Tyler’s not the biggest two in the league in terms of if that’s the position he’s playing, in terms of um you know, in terms of his uh you know, his his wingspan and all that kind of stuff. We we know about the limitations Tyler has defensively. I I guess with Davi, are you like he’s such a good defender, but he’s he’s short. Okay. Like are you comfortable with like him being your best backcourt defender going forward? He’s built like a running back. Like he he really is. Like you talk about it like are you comfortable with that? I am when you have Bonabio on your team like when you have the versatility that you have like DaVon can be such a dog in the back court be that good of a defender but he’s still not the best defender on the team that that doesn’t isn’t forced to play that style. Uh it just works and it just makes sense. Like I think specifically you’re looking at like a lot of these teams like whether it’s Houston or Detroit or some of these teams have lost you know recently but they’ve had this versatility defensively like the what the Thompson Twins or they go to these big lineups and they’re able to kind of guard the point of attack but in a lengthier fashion. Uh yeah like that’s always going to be like a needed quality on your team. Like anybody’s going to want that but like you’re that’s not easy to come by. Like that’s not easy to find when you talk about that level of versatility. Uh the thing is with that, like let’s just use the Thompson Twins example, like they’re just, you know, these out of your mind, you know, point of attack defenders that are that are lengthy. Uh they’re not great shooters from the outside. you got to play both sides this season where you had one of your one of the best point of attack defenders in the league also shoot 45% from three and gave you something offensively where you would think you’d have more offense or more lineup versatility than ever over the last few seasons and you know for Miami but obviously they just didn’t have the right guys around it to really make it work and make a push but obviously I do I do trust that I I think DaVon’s also a guy even though he’s short when if you’re going to have a smaller defender that’s a good like some of these guys in the are like known as like you mentioned like the steel type defenders where they’re just getting the passing them to do that. He’s not like that as you mentioned. He is a running back. He is a physical guy. I do trust him to size up on a lot of these wings. We saw him do it. Like yes, he’s going to be they are going to have a shot over the top of him if they fade away. But I mean I think Miami and a lot of states are going to allow those fadeaway jumpers from wings. Uh if DaVon is holding them to that like I think he’s that good of a defender to do that. He could play so many different styles as we’ve seen with the zones, with the press, with the man. Uh the way just I don’t think anything else matters to him defensively. Just watching him get around a screen and force three moving screens a game in itself should warrant uh a new contract this upcoming season for the Heat. Like they haven’t had a guy like that be able to get through screens, get around them, uh be able to go over and recover and not get lost in the background. Like all that stuff matters. he is just a different level uh of defender that we’ve seen, you know, in that back court in a long time. So, I don’t really care about the the length. They they they’re building their roster right now around Bamonware, as you said. They should focus on that core being your your lengthy piece in and you know, look at Cleveland. I mean, they’re a perfect example, right? I mean, I I know that they’re not at the level of those guys. I mean, DaVon’s not a Garland scorer. Uh but like you’re talking about kind of a front court that’s built this system around you know rebounding defense forcing things into the lane. Uh it hasn’t really mattered like they’re able to get around that you know non-length in the back court even on their bench they don’t really have I mean what Ty Jerome’s coming in Sam Merrill’s coming in like it’s a decent base that it can work if you have the right guys around it. And that’s why when you compare DaVon to Chomemers it’s like the difference is who was around Chomemers compared to who’s around DaVon right now now. like it makes DaVon is the perfect complimentary piece to a good team. So, if Miami could figure that out and get that, you know, back to a certain level, you need DaVon on on your roster even more so. Okay, so that’s the final question here and I’ll I’ll get to my answer on this after yours. Everything when it comes to in life, right, or in sports, it comes down to how desperately do you need something, right? Okay. Can you live without something or can’t you? So, I’ll just ask this. the Heat are going to make these transactions. We don’t know whether they’re going to push forward for Durant yet or whether they’re going to pull back a little bit, whether they’re going to stay about where they are. But I’ll just pose this question. How devastating a loss would it would it be for the Heat, especially after he was kind of the prize of the Jimmy trade, as it turned out, if they did not resign him this off season. If that was the case, I would say enough with these pipe dreams of Kevin Durant and big stars that we keep talking about, it’s time to go, you know, youthful rebuild draft and everything else that we talked about as the other option. You know, we keep saying, you know, pick a side. Either you’re going to have to, you know, go allin for the guy uh or kind of get that soft reset started. if you’re losing DaVon because of that and I it would be tough to really see him go because I don’t think it’s not like you know when Max got that money it was like well they were never paying Max that this would be a loss where you say well that was that was reasonable that was a reasonable price to get him back on. So, if that’s the case and you’re losing out on him just for like, you know, just a few dollars here, uh, yeah, it’s it’s definitely would be time to kind of lean in the direction of youth, kind of go a little bit south as as a franchise for a couple of years and kind of rebuild. But I don’t see that being the case. I mean, I I really it would this is one of those I mean, now the more I say this, he’s definitely gonna walk or if you say that you But it’s we’re jinxing it. We’re 100% jinxing it. But it is hard for me to see that happening. It just is. I just like what before we get to your answer like what kind of do you even see like throwing him an offer? Like I’m I’m some of these teams like like a lot of the top teams we’re saying a good team that would throw him offer. I don’t even really seem being realistic for number one cap space reasons and two fit reasons. Like there’s a lot of these teams that already have their kind of their back courts made out and they have defensive guys like I was looking like Indiana they already have their guys like TJ McConnell and and these like if you go on the line there’s a lot of uh he’d probably end up having to go to a midtowe team which is kind of where Miami is right now. Uh so and I don’t see a mid-toe team throwing a ton of money at DaVon Mitchell. So to answer your question it would be devastating because I don’t think it would be out of their range. Here’s where I’m at with it. Uh, it’s crazy to say that losing DaVon Mitchell would be devastating. But I I especially considering this was a player who really was having trouble finding a home, but I do think with where the fan base is right now and this was a popular player, I think it would be a blow in that regard. I do think it’s a blow on the court because obviously he’s a player. They’ve looked for a point of attack defender for a long time. That Gabe was kind of it. Uh, DaVon is better at it and and that’s something that you need in today’s NBA. I don’t think he’s going to get an offer from someone else that is way out of range. they they will pay their own guys. We saw they tried to overpay Caleb Martin, right? Worked out that they didn’t. So, I I I I think he’s coming back, but I I do think Okay. And look, if you’re getting a superstar and DaVon is sacrificed, then I get it and fans will get over that, too. But if you’re not, and you’ve added this piece in the Jimmy trade, uh they got to figure out a way to get this done. And I I I feel like there is going to be an offer made at the beginning that that will be commensurate with what he can provide for them. And I just don’t think that there’s going to be a team out there that’s going to jump in. Again, I don’t want to jinx it either because you just never know how these things are going to play out. He did not seem committal in his his exit interview. He seemed open to whatever, but I know that he liked he was also never are, but also they were coming off losing by 92 points in two games. I mean, everybody is going to start to have some second thoughts about stuff, but this is a place that fits for him. Um, I don’t, you know, I think as a, if he’s like your seventh best player on the team, like you’re in pretty good shape, which is probably about where he should fit as like your first guard off the bench. So, we’ll see where this plays out, but I do think he’ll be back. And I do think it should be a priority to bring him back, and I think it is. So, I don’t think we’re going to uh diverge much. All right. Many podcasts to come in our offseason series. Um, I I one guy I want to talk about in an upcoming one with you, Brady, is Yovic. So, we’ll get to that one here over the next week or so. And again, extending him. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but we’ll talk about kind of what the possibilities are there. 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Ethan and Brady discuss Davion Mitchell’s free agent situation and how far the Heat should go to bring him back.

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