Cavs guard Donovan Mitchell just had the best January of any Eastern Conference player
The NBA announced Thursday that Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell earned Eastern Conference Player of the Month honors for January.
Coming off a game against the Detroit Pistons in which he scored a season-high tying 45 points, Mitchell averaged 28.6 points, 5.2 rebounds, 7.6 assists and 2.08 steals in 34.1 minutes while posting three double-doubles, a career high, during the month.
He was one of two players — the Philadelphia 76ers' Joel Embiid being the other — to have multiple games of more than 40 points in the month.
Mitchell, the Eastern Conference steals leader, had at lead one steal in 12 of the 13 games the Cavs played in January, leading them to a 11-2 record for the month.
He also notched a couple of career milestones during the month:
Scored 45 points twice in the month, the first coming in the team’s NBA Paris Game Jan. 11 against the Brooklyn Nets in which he added 12 rebounds, six rebounds and four steals, becoming only the fifth player in NBA history to do so since 1994.
In Cleveland’s 40-point win over Milwaukee on Jan. 17, the guard from Louisville tallied his 11,000th career point and became the fastest player in league history to accumulate 11,000 points and 1,200 3-pointers (443 games).
Mitchell is averaging a team-best 28.2 points (seventh-best in NBA), a career-high 5.5 rebounds, a career-high 6.4 assists (18th in NBA) and a career-high 1.92 steals (second in NBA) in 35.6 minutes.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: NBA selects Donovan Mitchell Eastern Conference Player of the Month
