25-under-25: Donovan Mitchell is blossoming

The Step Back is rolling out its 25-under-25 list over this week. Follow along with our rankings of the top 25 NBA players under the age of 25.

I CAN’T BELIEVE HE WENT SO LATE! Odds are, any conversation centered around the Jazz in the past 11 months mentioned Donovan Mitchell’s draft position in the first few sentences.

With the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, everyone talks about how so many teams — teams desperately seeking lead guards — foolishly passed up Mitchell on his descent to the No. 13 overall pick. But It wasn’t so crazy at the time.

His numbers at Louisville were good-but-not-great. While he averaged 15.6 points in his sophomore and final season there, he was a tweener guard with questionable shot selection, appearing to lack the size to be a true-2 and playmaking abilities to run the show.

Turns out, his ridiculous 6-foot-10 wingspan and all-world athleticism helped bridge the gaps in both directions, while that suspect shot selection could have been more a product of his environment than a mark against his game. If a redraft of the 2017 class was held, there’s a non-zero chance he’d get taken first overall.

As a Knicks fan, part of me is happy Mitchell didn’t end up in New York. Partly because Frank Ntilikina is my large French adult son, but mostly because the organization’s sludgy runoff would’ve dampened Mitchell’s bloom into the instantaneous dynamo he became.

Every so often, the universe tends to unfold as it should. For Mitchell, that meant ending up in Utah and immediately stepping in as the face of the team.

After putting up one of the best rookie seasons ever by any statistical measure, Mitchell’s greatness and skills are apparent. Just take a look at these advanced numbers. Here’s a fun fact; did you know Mitchell became the third rookie all-time to score 20 points in their first five playoff games? He joined the esteemed company of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lou Hudson.

Let’s go past analytics and trivial tidbits into the cut-and-dried results. He carried a Jazz team devoid of any real scoring threats and averaged 20.5 points on 43.7 percent from the field. That all went along with 3.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.5 steals and 2.4 made 3’s per game.

His vibrancy pushed Utah to the No. 5 seed in an über-competitive Western Conference and past a superiorly talented and experienced Thunder team into the second round of the playoffs.

Few players in the entire league, let alone someone under 25 years old, could have done that. Mitchell is already a star and some would say the “true rookie” of the year. While he fell short of the award, he’ll have to settle for making it all the way up to No. 6 on our list.

This year’s 25-under-25 illustrations are the work of Andrew Maahs of Basemint Design. You can follow on Twitter, @BasemintDesign.