For years, the Miami Heat were in conversations to acquire star shooting guard Donovan Mitchell.

Now, they face him in the postseason as they square off against the No. 1 Cleveland Cavaliers Sunday night.

Miami tried to acquire Mitchell to pair a superstar next to former forward Jimmy Butler, who had multiple postseasons without much offensive help. Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro’s inconsistency and lack of aggression hurt Miami in aiding Butler, stopping them short of winning a championship in 2022 and 2023.

Unfortunately, Miami didn’t make a big enough push to acquire Mitchell, leading him to eventually land in Cleveland after five seasons with the Utah Jazz.

Mitchell has had individual success but hasn’t passed the second round so far with the Cavaliers. With the No. 1 seed this season, Mitchell hopes to finally reach the Finals but the journey starts against a red-hot Heat team.

They have their own D. Mitchell to unleash in the postseason: newcomer Davion Mitchell, who had an exhilarating overtime performance over the Atlanta Hawks to advance to the postseason.

“Don’t count us out,” Mitchell said. “I feel like we went through a lot of adversity in the regular season. People counted us out, we lost 10 games in a row, became the tenth seed, and people didn’t really believe in us. But this is Heat Culture, so you can never count us out. We’re always going to be in the grind.”

Who knows? Maybe this ends up becoming a greater deal than acquiring the six-time All-Star.

Jayden Armant is a graduate of the Howard University School of Communications and a contributor to Miami Heat on SI. He can be reached at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @jaydenarmant.

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