Utah Jazz: A look at Donovan Mitchell’s career-best second half
With Donovan Mitchell experiencing an early season sophomore slump to begin the year, he’s turned things around and is putting together a career-best stretch in the second half of the 2018-19 NBA season for the Utah Jazz.
The 2018-19 NBA season didn’t start exactly how either the Utah Jazz or Donovan Mitchell had planned.
Utah kicked off the early portion of the season with high hopes coming off a trip to the second round of the playoffs while having a bulk of that team returning for another go at it.
The Jazz were also getting a big man in Rudy Gobert back fully healthy after he was on and off the court in 2017-18 with injuries. They were opening the year welcoming back their young up-and-coming star in Mitchell for his sophomore season after an impressive rookie campaign.
As the regular season began, Utah quickly started to trend in the wrong direction. The Jazz fell to the bottom half of the Western Conference standings and many around the league started to wonder if the run they went on a year ago in the second half was just them getting hot at the right time and nothing more.
On top of it all during the rollercoaster start to the regular season — although Gobert was already on pace to having one of the best statistical years of his career — Utah’s other cornerstone player in Mitchell was going through and early-season sophomore slump, resulting in inefficiency and inconsistent play throughout the first half of the schedule.
During the first 41 games of the year, Mitchell’s statistics weren’t terrible, but the performances he was putting together in the first portion of the regular season schedule wasn’t what we saw out of him throughout his rookie campaign.
The high-flying wing began the season by averaging 20.4 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.6 steals in 32.7 minutes per game over his first 37 appearances. During that span, he shot 40.9 percent from the field, 30.9 percent from 3 and 79.5 percent from the free throw line, while tallying a plus/minus of +1.7.
Utah was sliding during the first portion of the season, and the inefficiency and inconsistency that Mitchell was displaying wasn’t helping turn that trend around.
During the second half of the schedule, however, Mitchell’s play has improved and he’s become much more consistent at the same time — so much so that Mitchell is arguably putting together a career-best stretch during the second half of his sophomore season. He’s led Utah to another surge and a current spot in the middle of the Western Conference playoff race as the postseason inches closer.
Entering Monday’s slate of games, Mitchell has appeared in all 33 games in the second half of the regular season for the Jazz, who are 43-30 overall and hold the No. 7 seed in the West playoff picture.
The wing is averaging 27.4 points, 4.8 assists, 4.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 34.9 minutes per contest. His shooting has taken off to another level, having shot 44.8 percent from the field, 40.2 percent from 3 and 80.2 percent from the free throw line in those 33 games. He has also recorded a plus/minus of +5.8.
Utah once again turned its year around by putting a strong stretch together after the All-Star Break and into the second half of the regular season, likely placing itself in the heart of the playoffs for the third straight year.
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There have been a lot of factors that have gone into the Jazz turning their year around, but having their second-year stud in Mitchell experiencing a career-best span so far during the second portion of the schedule has certainly helped.