ESPN’s Brian Windhorst inadvertently created quite the stir earlier this week when he called into local Cleveland sports talk radio and said that there was some “outlandish” stuff that the Cavaliers were looking into this offseason to improve their roster.
Naturally, the internet took it and ran with it. It somehow got twisted into rumors that Cleveland was looking into trading either of its star guards, Darius Garland or Donovan Mitchell.
Windhorst called back into ESPN Cleveland to clarify his remarks from earlier this week.
“First off, the Cavs aren’t trading Darius Garland, OK?” Windhorst said on The Really Big Show on ESPN Cleveland radio. “They’re not trading him. They’re not trading Donovan Mitchell. I don’t remember what word I used but it made everybody very, very, very excited … I didn’t realize the word ‘outlandish’ was such a trigger word. So from now on, I will be very very careful to be very bland. I am going to be extremely bland when I say the Cleveland Cavaliers are not trading Darius Garland.”
Cleveland would be wise to hold onto the two guards, one in Garland, drafted and developed by the franchise, and another in Mitchell, acquired in a trade with Utah last offseason.
Garland has blossomed into an All-Star with the Cavaliers, averaging nearly 22 points per game in the last two seasons. Mitchell, meanwhile, has joined the fold and helped Cleveland develop a formidable one-two punch, as he averaged a career-best 28.3 points per game this past season in helping Cleveland reach the playoffs.
