Donovan Mitchell: The one that got away for Los Angeles Lakers?
If you had told me a season ago that the #13 pick during the draft - Donovan Mitchell - would have a rookie breakout season, I'd have laughed in your face. And for the first nine games into the season, the laugh would have been vindicated: Mitchell stuttered through the start of his rookie NBA season.
By January though, he became the focal point of his team on his way to a playoff berth as the Jazz won 48 games, highlighted by a 41 point explosion against Anthony Davis' Pelicans. As if that weren't enough, he also won the All-Star Dunk Contest with a throwback 360 windmill dunk as a nod to Vince Carter, and came second in an extremely tight ROY race.
Donovan Mitchell is a pure scorer. At 34% 3-point shooting, he's a solid force behind the arc, forcing the opposition to keep a man on him at all times. But he's not just a pure 3 point specialist either. Last season he maneuvered his way to a neat 50% 2-point shooting and regularly dunked - with emphasis. He's become an offensive force who regularly frees up teammates for open threes.
The man is quick, agile, has excellent footwork and can cook any man in front of him if he's left on an island. He's locked in, too, and shows a determination and maturity that most of his draft class simply haven't shown (my apologies to Jayson Tatum who is a wonderful human being all round and also is exempt from this comparison).
And of course, he slow roasted the (short-lived) OK3 experiment when he averaged a mind-boggling (for a rookie in a playoff series) 27 points in a (for the second consecutive year) playoff knockout of the Thunder.
Of course, part of this scene is helped along by Gobert's DPOY presence clogging the paint and the rounded games of Ingles and Rubio.
In many ways, Mitchell reminds me of Allen Iverson. The similarities are there for anyone to see: Iverson shook Kobe for 41 points and 16 assists way early in his career and also had a defensive mastermind in Mutombo during his Finals run in 2001 (Of course, that didn't stop Shaq from averaging 33.0 / 15.8 / 4.8 while Mutombo was his man on his way to a Finals MVP, but the similarities are there).
The clinch comes in efficiency. While Iverson was a go-at-it-till-you-score sort of talent, Mitchell is already very efficient in terms of shot selection and conversion rate.
Imagine the Lakers as they are right now, with Rondo as the facilitating point guard (instead of Lonzo, who'd be elsewhere) and LeBron's passing skills and being a magnet for defenders while Mitchell torched whoever was guarding him.
All the Lakers on the team right now inspire some amount of fear, but probably none other than Kuzma (who has a reputation for going off even when he's not the main scoring option) demand as much respect as Mitchell.
The Lakers run, and they run fast. They were among the fastest - if not fastest outright in the futuristic viewpoint considering their age - and their offensive transition pace was lethal. So much so that LeBron, now 33, might feel a bit more comfortable sagging off in transition if there's a proven scorer on the other end of the run.
Mitchell is also much more of a threat from behind the arc, unlike Ball. In a lineup that also features Rondo, JaVale (although he did make a three from the corner) and sometimes-hot-sometimes-cold Lance Stephenson, Mitchell would have been a go-to threat for 3 point shooting.
He would be a fit in almost every lineup - except possibly the Celtics and Warriors - but a dream come true for the Lakers.
Interesting tidbit - Kobe was drafted as the #13 pick. No prizes for guessing Mitchell's draft number. For Rob Pelinka and Magic Johnson, Mitchell might have been the one that got away; much like Tatum is the one that got away from the Sixers, who traded their #3 pick - that eventually became Tatum - to Danny Ainge for the #1 pick, who became Fultz. There's no lesson (but it does have a fair bit of irony) to this fact except this: never trade with Danny Ainge.
With the Jazz being a possible playoff opponent against the Lakers for the near future, it remains to be seen how much this particular oversight returns to cost them.
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