Perkins Calls Mitchell 'Soft' After He Asked for the Cavs Game to Be Cancelled

Kendrick Perkins called Donovan Mitchell “soft” on X after the Cavaliers star said he would have preferred Saturday’s game against Dallas be cancelled. The Cavs had lost 133-121 to Miami on Friday, then spent the night in South Beach because an FAA ground stop cancelled more than 4,700 flights, flying home Saturday morning and landing around noon for a 7:30 p.m. tip. The game went ahead anyway, and Cleveland won 127-117 without all five of its usual starters.

What did Mitchell actually say?

He said the situation was unprecedented, and he did not hide that he wanted out of the game. “This is unprecedented,” Mitchell said after Friday’s loss to the Heat, as reported by Cleveland beat writer Chris Fedor. “Back-to-back. Three-hour flight. It was already going to be a tough one. But if they say we have to play then we have to play.” Asked directly whether he would prefer the game be cancelled, he answered: “Me, personally, yeah for sure.” It was an honest answer to a direct question, and it was also the kind of answer that travels badly once it leaves the locker room. Within hours it was on Perkins’ timeline, and the former champion did not hold back.

What did Perkins say back?

“Soft as hell!!! Doing all that crying… leave some room for the babies,” Perkins wrote on X. Perkins, a former NBA champion with the Celtics and now an ESPN analyst, has history with Mitchell: he called him soft in May 2025 too, after the Cavs’ playoff exit, arguing that a Donovan Mitchell-led team had never reached the Conference Finals. The new post landed on November 15 and spread quickly, with fans splitting between those who thought Mitchell was asking for special treatment and those who thought the travel genuinely warranted a complaint. Perkins has made a career of blunt takes, and this one was built for social media: short, personal and impossible to ignore.

How bad was the Cavs’ travel, really?

Bad enough that the complaint had a real basis. The nationwide FAA ground stop on Friday night lasted more than four hours and disrupted travel across the NFL, NHL and college football as well as the NBA. The Cavs could not secure a pilot until Saturday morning, and EssentiallySports reports the team was scheduled for an 8 a.m. bus ride to the airport and a 9 a.m. flight, landing in Cleveland around noon for a 7:30 p.m. tip. That is a Friday night game in Miami, a night in a hotel, a morning flight and a home game the same evening, with barely eight hours between landing and tip-off. The same ground stop stranded NFL teams across the country and forced the league to reassign its officiating crews, so the Cavs were not the only ones caught out. The question was never whether the travel was hard. It was whether a star should ask for the game to be cancelled over it.

What did the Cavs’ coach say?

Kenny Atkinson took the opposite line from his star before the game. “There’s no feeling sorry for ourselves,” Atkinson said after Friday’s game. “It’s part of it. You just adapt.” EssentiallySports reports Atkinson even said the team was ready to sleep on the bus if needed. The contrast between the coach’s shrug and Mitchell’s request is what gave Perkins his opening. A coach saying his team will adapt while his best player asks for the game to be called off is a split that writes itself, and Perkins simply said out loud what plenty of fans were already thinking.

How did the shorthanded Cavs win?

By getting 46 points from two players most fans had not heard of a week ago. Mitchell, James Harden, Jarrett Allen and Peyton Watson were all ruled out after being listed as questionable, and Evan Mobley was already sidelined with a sprained left great toe, leaving Cleveland without all five of its usual starters. Tyrese Proctor and Mario Hezonja, who only just returned to the NBA with Cleveland, combined for 46 points, while Meleek Thomas added 20 and Thomas Bryant 19 in the 127-117 win. EssentiallySports reports Mitchell was ruled out with a left knee bruise. The win took some of the sting out of the criticism, since the team coped without the player who had asked for the night off, but it also gave Perkins’ side a ready-made reply: the team did not need him after all.

What happens next?

The Cavs host the Chicago Bulls on Monday, and Mitchell’s status for that game is the next check. If he returns and plays well, the Perkins exchange becomes a footnote to a strange weekend. If he sits out again, the criticism will grow louder, and Perkins will have more to say. The NBA’s strangest stat story of the week, Franz Wagner losing his first triple-double to a stat correction, shows how quickly a weekend narrative can flip, and Cade Cunningham’s 52-point night with zero turnovers is the standard Mitchell will be measured against when he returns. Mitchell has not responded to Perkins yet, and the smart money says he answers on the court on Monday rather than on X.