25-under-25: Donovan Mitchell at No. 6

Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz has shown us what makes him special right from the start.

There’s something about playing basketball with the Utah Jazz that allows for a sense of flying under the radar and that’s what Donovan Mitchell has kind of done. But wasn’t he on the All-Rookie team, second in the Rookie of the Year voting and a first-time All-Star this year? To the one of you that’s maybe asking, my answer is:  yes, yes and yes; but it takes something like the playoff duel he had in the bubble with Jamal Murray of the Denver Nuggets to remind most of us of the special talent he possesses.

He went off for 36 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists per game for the series, including two f50-pieces, and left an indelible image of how much players can care with him laying on the court, deflated after a Game 7 loss, with chin on arms and tears in his faraway eyes. We all realized the leader Mitchell is, despite his youth in the NBA, with his “…this is just the beginning…” remarks following that literal heartbreaker. We forget that Donovan Mitchell has been performing for three seasons now, driving the Utah Jazz to the playoffs in each one, and doing it with remarkable consistency and flair.

There was no gradual easing in when Gordon Hayward left the Utah Jazz in free agency, right after Mitchell was drafted, and the organization was left with no one to turn but the somewhat-unknown rookie who never even packed up his room at Louisville. Donovan Mitchell paid his own way to attend workouts before that 2017 draft that he never intended to enter and was only convinced to declare at the behest of some All-NBA players he was working out with. He has been in the top-20 of the league in usage rate all three of his seasons and handed the reins of the team at clutch time from almost the start.

There was no sophomore slump, even though Donovan Mitchell started his second year out slowly and now with the full attention of opposing coaching staffs, as he inched up most of his season averages and was 15th in the NBA in scoring. This past campaign saw him move up as the league’s 13th-highest scorer, as well as log the tenth most minutes to go along with the All-Star nod and historic playoff duel participant.

Donovan Mitchell has established himself as one of the most potent two-way players in the NBA

He plays. He plays on both ends, being in the top-20 in Defensive Win Shares and steals two out of three seasons. Even though he’s only 6-foot-1, he has a 6-doot-10 wingspan that he combines with lateral quickness and a solid frame to play bigger than his height, getting in passing lanes and being able to switch onto larger guards and even hold his own in the post situationally. Donovan Mitchell is an elite-level athlete with an explosive first-step and vertical leap that he uses to rebound his position well, especially defensively, so he can initiate the break and get to the basket.

He cares, and he seems to genuinely enjoy playing with the Utah Jazz while ingratiating himself into the community. The Utah Jazz have themselves been remarkably consistent as an organization, making the playoffs 29 out of the last 37 seasons and six Conference Finals in that time; albeit one who generally needs to draft its stars and mine free agency for the its’-kind-of-player types. The Jazz do have the recent and unfortunate trend of losing their franchise players after signing their rookie extensions, so only time will tell what happens with Donovan Mitchell. He did just sign a five-year max contract that could be worth almost $200 million if he continues his upward arc towards All-NBA status and most indicators tell us he wants to remain with the Utah Jazz.

Donovan Mitchell fits the mold of what they look for when they draft a potential cornerstone player, and is a loose combination of two of the franchise’s biggest stars:  a commanding on-the-ball presence and 3-point threat a la John Stockton with the physique, tenacity at the rim and paint presence, but in a different way, of Karl Malone. The way Donovan Mitchell attacks the paint is to drive it and drive it to score.

He was 13th in drives last season but only took 45 percent of any resulting shots within the restricted area. Donovan Mitchell makes a higher than average percentage of those paint shots outside that area with acrobatic finishes utilizing his athleticism and without taking the punishment associated with getting fully to the basket. The downside is despite his high number of drives into the lane and relative success in making the difficult shots he creates and takes off of them, if Mitchell went in a little closer, his success rate could jump 20 points to the league average of 63 percent within the restricted area. His stop-short drives also prevent him from going to the foul line nearly enough for a player who creates so much around the basket.

Donovan Mitchell has never shot more than 5.1 free throws a game and even dropped to 4.7 this season while upping his average six points to a career-high from 80 percent over the previous two years. Another place we see this disparity in an area of strength without him necessarily exploiting it is in his 3-point shooting where he shot another career-high, but took twice as many pull-up or step-back 3s, only making 32 percent of them, as opposed to catch-and-shoot ones where he was top 15 in the NBA. This is mere nit-picking to streamline Donovan Mitchell’s offensive game if he wants to achieve higher rungs on the scoring ladder.

The weak spot of his game that he really needs to work on most is his passing. With the departure of Ricky Rubio, the Utah Jazz fell into the lower fourth of the league in assisted buckets. Despite his high usage with a penchant for driving and an unselfish, team-first mentality; Donovan Mitchell has never averaged over 4.3 assists during his career. He would be well suited to seek out more kick opportunities instead of taking the tough, contested shots he frequently takes since the Utah Jazz had the highest 3-point percentage with a particular proficiency for knocking down stand-still shots and open looks from behind the arc.

A lot has to do with his natural position being more of a scoring guard although he is an undersized one by NBA standards. His creative game is the best-suited one on the Jazz roster to get open looks for teammates even though he is a high-volume scorer himself. Donovan Mitchell wants to be great though, and more importantly for the Utah Jazz, he wants to win and be the leader of a Jazz team that does that consistently, goes deep into the playoffs and garners the kind of attention that a very loud championship title run could bring.