Somehow, Donovan Mitchell has quickly and decisively established himself as the number one scoring option on the Jazz. That’s probably clue #1 that the Jazz aren’t going to match the lofty expectations they set after their playoff room last season. You could argue that Rodney Hood is the number one scoring option, but I don’t want to hear that arguement. I want to live in a world where a mid-first round pick comes in and immediately exerts his control over the offense.
Even after this impressive scoring effort, Mitchell is only shooting 35% from the field. Most of that is thanks to his abysmal 3-of-21 shooting display a few nights ago. Clue #2 that the Jazz will underperform this year is that three of their top four scorers (Hood, Gobert, Rubio, Mitchell) are shooting well below 40% from the field this year (only one guess on which one of those is shooting 62%). Clue #3 is that Gordon Hayward retired from the game of basketball to pursue a career in professional E-Sports, so he’s no longer around to be the do-it-all guy for them. Clue #4 is that Derrick Favors will never be good at basketball again except for in this one game.
So, my hope for Mitchell is that he finishes the year averaging 16 PPG on 39% shooting and the Jazz win 39 games and they miss the playoffs and we all learn a lesson about the negligible value of an iso-oriented volume scorer.