Al Taylor thought the basketball would land out of bounds when his son Najee threw an off-target pass in an AAU game, but Donovan Mitchell demonstrated arachnid-like acrobatics while executing a save with shades of the supernatural.
“Donovan jumps in the air, extends his arm out of bounds, but his body's inbounds, grabs the ball, brings the ball back inbounds, takes it through his leg and hits a 3-pointer,” Al Taylor said by phone from New Jersey. “My man, I was like, 'That was like some Spider-Man stuff!'
“You had to see it to believe it. It was real crazy. It was something — I'm telling you, man — out of a movie, straight out of a movie.”
What's in a name? Cavaliers All-Star Donovan Mitchell shares his favorite sports nicknames. What are yours?
Long before the Cavaliers — and their fans — became awestruck by Mitchell, he established a reputation as a kid from New York capable of Cirque du Soleil moves on the basketball court.
It's why Al Taylor started calling Mitchell “Spida D.” The “D” stands for Donovan, but the nickname evolved.
Mitchell, 26, is now widely known as “Spida.”
The origin story of the nickname provides a window into Mitchell's Big Apple roots as he prepares to lead the Cavs against his hometown New York Knicks in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Tipoff for Game 1 is set for 6 p.m. Saturday at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.
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Mitchell has advanced to the playoffs in each of his six NBA seasons, the first five with the Utah Jazz, who traded him to the Cavaliers in September after the Knicks fell short of sealing a blockbuster deal of their own for "Spida."
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The Cavs, meanwhile, are returning to the postseason for the first time since 2018 and the first time without LeBron James since 1998.
“It's a test for us, for myself,” Mitchell said in a recent interview with the Beacon Journal. “I've obviously been in the playoffs. I haven't gotten past the second round. That's a new challenge. It's a new situation. It's a new group.
“It's exciting. I think that's why we play this game — for these challenges.”
Although the Cavs (51-31) are the Eastern Conference's No. 4 seed and have home-court advantage in the opening round, the No. 5-seed Knicks (47-35) won three of the four regular-season meetings between the two teams.
There are several keys to the Cavs prevailing in the best-of-seven series. Mitchell living up to his greatness as an All-Star guard ranks high on the list of priorities, if not at the very top.
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A native of Elmsford, New York, a village in Westchester County, Mitchell played AAU basketball for the Riverside Hawks, based in Harlem, and then The City, headquartered in SoHo.
People involved with both programs were convinced a young Mitchell was destined for the NBA.
“Everybody on that circuit knew it,” said Al Taylor, who had a habit of nicknaming his son's teammates.
“When I watch him do things, I'm like, 'Oh, yeah, I've seen him do that before. Now he's just perfected it.'”
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Golden State Warriors guard Ty Jerome became a teammate of Mitchell when they were 8 or 9 years old and playing for Riverside.
“Even back then, you started to see him doing stuff athletically that kids just aren't supposed to be doing,” Jerome said. “He was almost dunking already. He probably had like a size-15 shoe. You could kind of tell what type of athlete he was back then, and then his skill level just constantly progressed. He was kind of underrated when he got to high school, too, and he just in college went to work. It's kind of cool to see the player he's become.”
Throughout the early stages of Mitchell's hoops journey, evidence of his “Spida” qualities emerged not just on offense, but on defense, too. Mitchell would often use his massive wingspan — which later yielded a measurement of 6-feet-10-inches in the buildup to the 2017 NBA Draft — to register steals atop a 1-3-1 zone.
A former player for The City, Najee Taylor explained “a lot of teams couldn't get the ball across half court” when Mitchell led a press.
“There would be times the other team would throw the ball so high on purpose,” Najee Taylor added, “and he would still get it someway, somehow, even if it was off his fingertip.”
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Arjay Perovic has coached Mitchell, former NBA player Eric Paschall, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Matt Ryan and many other standout players at the helm of The City. Perovic recalls Mitchell stealing the ball on several consecutive possessions as a sixth grader competing in an AAU national title game at the Boo Williams Sportsplex in Hampton, Virginia.
“It was like five times in a row when they tried to make a pass across the floor, and he snatched it out of the air,” Perovic said. “Al, at the time, was sitting in the stands right behind our bench. It was a close game, and after [Mitchell] had done it four to five consecutive times and converted, Al hopped out of his seat ... and he was like, 'That's Spida D! He snatched it out of the air like a spider!'”
All these years later, the answer to when Al Taylor first uttered Mitchell's famous nickname differs depending on who's asked.
Al Taylor's theory is it happened when Mitchell saved his son's pass from going out of bounds but it simply took until the national championship game in Hampton for the moniker to enter the lexicon of everyone else involved with The City. Perovic points to the scene from Virginia as the genesis.
Mitchell embraced the nickname from the beginning and believes it was born of defensive plays he made.
“I had long arms,” the 6-foot-3 Mitchell said. “I was at the front of the press just getting all those steals. [Al Taylor] said it was like I was spinning a web, basically.
“Shout-out to Al because it definitely fits with what I still do to this day.”
Indeed, "Spida" qualifies as an apropos characterization of Mitchell's game.
The Cavs have witnessed the instincts, the adjustments in midair ending with gravity-defying layups and the slam dunks reminiscent of Spider-Man swinging between skyscrapers.
“Donovan can scratch his knees standing up,” Najee Taylor said. “He was just genetically enhanced. He used to get these rebounds so far out of his frame, so at that point, my dad was just like, 'Yo, this is some Spider-Man thing. This is what Spider-Man does.'
“The Spida thing just kind of stuck, and it just made sense, just for his athletic ability and what he does on the court. Even his finishing, he just finds a way to just go around you, under you. It's just crazy. The way he contorts his body with the ball is just different.”
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From Mitchell's perspective, the nickname didn't go mainstream until he pulled off a highlight dunk as a Jazz rookie against the Los Angeles Lakers. Drafted 13th overall out of the University of Louisville in 2017, Mitchell said “it took off to a whole other level” after he had won the dunk contest during All-Star Weekend in February 2018.
“I do remember a young kid coming and taking the league by storm, winning the dunk contest, and then the playoff that he had, it was something special,” said Cavs backup point guard Ricky Rubio, who played for the Jazz during Mitchell's first two NBA seasons. “I went down with a hamstring [injury against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the first round]. He had [38] points and took over the whole game. As a rookie, that's something special, and I knew in that moment that he was going to be really good.”
The Cavs hope to benefit from similar postseason heroics.
Along those lines, Mitchell's favorite superhero is Spider-Man, though he also likes Batman. His Twitter and Instagram handles are @spidadmitchell and spidadmitchell.
With a nod to Spider-Man's archrival, Mitchell wore Venom-themed shoes during his triumphant dunk contest. The “Spida” motif is prevalent in his Adidas-produced collection of shoes and apparel.
“I won't give my Xbox name, but it's centered around Miles Morales, the Latino, Black Spider-Man,” Mitchell said. “So I'm a big fan.”
In 2019, Mitchell appeared in a commercial for the movie “Spider-Man: Far from Home.”
“Which is freaking incredible to me,” Mitchell said. “It's like a life accomplishment. To go from being a little kid with no hair, to the front of the press, to being in a commercial with [actors] Tom Holland and Jake Gyllenhaal, to be able to be in the NBA with that name, life goes full circle.”
Mitchell used the phrases “full circle” and “near and dear” to describe his feelings about facing the Knicks in his first postseason with the Cavs. By the way, Peter Parker, Spider-Man's secret identity, hails from New York, just like Mitchell and a substantial support system formed during his childhood.
“Every night when I watch him play for the Cavs, it's just a surreal moment to see him out there living his dream. He dreamed about this,” said Perovic, who coached Mitchell from ages 11-18. “I remember when the Cavs won a championship [in 2016]. We were leaving for an AAU tournament, and he wore his LeBron James jersey to practice. And now to see him pretty much battling against a team that I grew up following and watching closely, it's so surreal.”
The creator of “Spida,” Al Taylor grew up a Knicks fan, too. Count him among the masses who had hoped Mitchell would be able to call Madison Square Garden home with a trade to New York.
“The Knicks dropped the ball,” Al Taylor said. “Why wouldn't you get Donovan? The place would have been packed.
“It would've just been huge — huge from a marketing standpoint, from a fan base standpoint. And I'm telling you, they would've sold out. Everybody remembers Donovan, man. Everybody.”
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Despite New York's familiarity with Mitchell, playing in Utah the past five seasons allowed him to fly under the radar a bit by NBA standards.
His nickname gave him a convenient way to connect with a new fan base, as evidenced by spider emojis flooding social media when the Cavs acquired him on Sept. 1 for Lauri Markkanen, Ochai Agbaji, Collin Sexton, three unprotected first-round choices (2025, 2027 and 2029) and two pick swaps (2026 and 2028).
“It's kind of how people knew me,” Mitchell said. “When I got traded here, there was a lot of unknown of what is he, how good is he, what does he do, what's he like, what's he like as a person?
“But everybody knew me as ['Spida.'] It definitely made it easier to come in and [for fans to] be like, 'All right, that's who that is.' And then obviously as the season progresses, you find out more about me as a person, as a player.”
Cleveland has liked what it has seen.
Mitchell averaged a career-high 28.3 points on 48.4% shooting from the field in the regular season to go along with 4.3 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.46 steals and 35.8 minutes per game.
“That trade was a steal. I'm glad he's on our team,” Browns cornerback and Cavs fan Greg Newsome II said. “He's so much more talented than I think even people give him credit for. Obviously, everyone knows he's an All Star, but I don't think people even give him enough credit.”
Mitchell set a single-game Cavs record by scoring 71 points against the Chicago Bulls on Jan. 2 and a single-season franchise record by making 245 3-pointers.
Before resting the past two games because playoff seeding had been secured, Mitchell scored at least 40 points in four consecutive games, joining James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Kobe Bryant as the only NBA players to do so in the last 25 seasons. His 13 games with 40-plus points is another single-season Cavs record, surpassing LeBron's 10 in 2005-06.
“Last year, [the Cavs] were playing great basketball, and he's taken them to even another level,” Jerome said. “The 71-point game was unreal, but he's been good all year. It hasn't just been that one game.”
The locker-room presence of Mitchell shouldn't be overlooked, either. He has helped develop team chemistry since his arrival.
“He fit right in with the group right away,” Cavs forward Evan Mobley said. “There were no hiccups or anything. He's really, truly a nice, genuine guy — always has his mind on everyone else and not him. I feel like that fit our system very well, and I feel like that's why he's doing so well with us.”
As Mitchell leads the Cavs into the playoffs, he said his goal is “always reaching for the highest expectation.”
The man with the limbs of a “Spida” is accustomed to seizing what others deem unattainable.
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cavs' Donovan Mitchell was given 'Spida' nickname in New York
