Donovan Mitchell credits Stephen A. Smith’s criticism with helping fuel his rise

It wasn’t too long ago that Stephen A. Smith was trying to will Donovan Mitchell to the New York Knicks.

There’s a complete history of Smith linking star players with the Knicks, so Mitchell isn’t an exception. But he’s also a born-and-bred New Yorker who reps the Mets logo everywhere he goes, so it’s not exactly a stretch. Most of the NBA media—including Smith and Bill Simmons—were wrong about Mitchell staying in Cleveland.

The Cavaliers inked the 27-year-old All-Star guard to a three-year, $150.3 million contract extension this offseason. A former first round pick out of Louisville, it would’ve been impossible a few years back to convince the former baseball player that he’d make it in the NBA — but here is.

During a recent interview on the MILLION DOLLAZ WORTH OF GAME podcast, Mitchell relayed the conversation back to Smith. It had nothing to do with the First Take host recruiting him to come home on The Big Apple but rather everything to do with the criticism he’d spew toward Mitchell on ESPN’s airwaves.

Mitchell said it was in his second season in the league that he stopped listening to the media. After experiencing the highs and lows of his sophomore season in the NBA, a teammate informed him that the doubt he’d hear was almost “a sign of respect.”

That’s how Mitchell knew he made it.

“And when people started talking sh*t about, ‘Oh, he not that good,’ and I overcame that little hump, that’s when I was like, ‘Alright, bet. I belong,” Mitchell said. “Because they only doing’ that — they not gonna talk sh*t, like you said, about the last guy on the bench.”

Everyone knows Smith. They know Smith can be abrasive and sometimes overly critical in his assessments of players—just ask Kawhi Leonard. But Mitchell made sure to single out Smith during this podcast interview as a critic whose criticism fueled him.

“I realized, like, oh, you got the Stephen A. Smiths talking about, ‘Oh, he can be this. He can be that.’ And then you start struggling then it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s not this. He’s not that.’ That’s when I was like, ‘Alright, bet.’ You overcome that. You start becoming better,” Mitchell said.

And while he’s overcome that, Mitchell understands that dealing with the ebbs and flows of the mainstream media is part of his job description. But at the same time, he makes sure to tell the younger generation that you can’t base how good you are on someone else’s opinion (perhaps a Stephen A. Smith) — otherwise, you’re not worth a damn.

Mitchell may have quieted his critics for now, but the relationship between athletes and the media is a constantly evolving dance. Opinions are part of the game, and love and hate will always be two steps behind success.

[MILLION DOLLAZ WORTH OF GAME]