I don’t understand why the Jazz commentators were hyped for the “Donovan Mitchell vs. Dennis Smith Jr.” battle. Can it even be called a “battle” when they don’t play the same position? And if it even was a battle, why would you get excited for it? Mitchell’s gonna crush that matchup eight out of ten times; indeed, he cooked DSJ for two of his buckets. There are a lot of things to get hyped for in basketball games, but one-sided rookie-on-rookie battles are not one of them. Me taking a freshly-microwaved Hot Pocket out of the microwave causes me to get more hyped than anything the Jazz or the Mavericks could do either individually or combined.
Mitchell went 8-of-20 from the field (nobody ever said he was a shy shooter) for 25 points, while DSJ went 2-of-11 from the field, scoring 7 points, with zero assists and five turnovers. If you had asked me how their statlines would have looked before the game, I probably would have supplied similar numbers, although I wouldn’t have been as harsh on DSJ as he was in real life.