Donovan Mitchell continues to make NBA rookie history

You don’t need me to tell you that Utah Jazz star rookie Donovan Mitchell is a special player.

You already know this.

Last night — despite dropping a crucial Game 5 to the Oklahoma City Thunder and Russell Westbrook’s heroics — Mitchell put himself into an elite class of NBA rookies by scoring 20 or more points in his first five playoff games. The electric rookie made his playoff debut with a 27 point, 10 rebound double-double and hasn’t looked back scoring 28, 22, 33, 23 points in his next four games.

In doing so, Mitchell joined only two other rookies to achieve this honor. Just to give you an idea of what type of names we’re talking about one is arguably the greatest player of all-time and the other, while not a Hall of Famer, was a six-time all-star.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yeah, he scored 20+ in his first 10 games as an NBA rookie. He, of course, became an immediate force in the NBA leading the 1970 Milwaukee Bucks to the Eastern Division Finals in his rookie year. Few players in the history of the game were as dominant as early as Kareem was so for Mitchell to be mentioned in the same sentence as the Master of the Sky Hook is quite the honor.

Joining Kareem and Mitchell is the star of the 1967 St. Louis Hawks: “Sweet Lou” Lou Hudson. Hudson began his NBA career on a well-balanced Hawks team that also featured standouts Lenny Wilkens, Bill Bridges, Zelmo Beaty and player/coach Richie Guerin. That Hudson was even able to start a rookie playoff scoring streak is quite an achievement as the Hawks, despite talent up and down the roster, finished with a disappointing 39-42 record.

Thankfully for the Hawks, the NBA’s Western Division was pretty bad. In fact, most of the league was bad in 1967. Only three teams that season played above .500 basketball: Philadelphia (68-13), Boston (60-21) and San Francisco (44-37). The remaining seven teams in the league were all below the water mark leading to the 36-45 New York Knicks and 33-48 Chicago Bulls making it to the NBA playoffs.

The Hawks easily dispatched the Bulls in the first round (3-0) and made a valiant run at the San Francisco Warriors before losing in six games. Hudson for his efforts scored 20 or more points in the first five games of his playoff career before settling at 18, 16, 15 and 15 for the remaining four games of his rookie campaign.

That’s it for comps to what Mitchell is doing right now for the Utah Jazz. Two guys. One has a case for greatest of all-time and the other was a six-time All-Star.

Even if we lower the streak to the first four games of a rookie’s playoff career, the list doesn’t exactly open up to the outer reaches of the league. Mitchell is still in elite-level company with five Hall of Famers and another player with a legit case as the greatest of all-time: Arvydas Sabonis, Chuck Person, David Robinson, Elvin Hayes, Marques Johnson, Michael Jordan and Alonzo Mourning.

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That’s seven more players all of which made huge impacts on the league including a handful of Hall of Famers, multi-time All-Stars and Rookie of the Year winners.

Now obviously there are a few factors that lead to a rookie scoring 20 or more points in their first four playoff games. For one, the rookie needs to have been drafted by a good team or be so overwhelmingly great that the lead their bad team to the playoffs. LeBron James, for instance, is not in the running because his debut season for the Cavaliers did not result in a playoff berth. So understand that while Mitchell is putting himself in elite company, there is important context to this honor.

Still, watching Mitchell so easily take to high-level playoff basketball and seeing him rub elbows statistically with some of the best ever is pretty awesome.