After raising fan expectations through Summer League and the preseason, through five regular season games Donovan Mitchell has looked like — well, a rookie.
It has manifested in a few ways during his first five games with the Jazz (2-3), but most notably, Mitchell’s shooting has been off-target to a concerning degree: While he has taken 52 shots, the second-most on the team to only Ricky Rubio, he’s only hitting 25 percent of those looks. His Phoenix stat line, when he was 1 for 7, was the latest in underwhelming shooting performances for the No. 13 pick in the draft.
It may be surprising, then, to hear coach Quin Snyder say that he doesn’t need Mitchell to necessarily dial it back.
“Donovan’s challenge is to continue to be aggressive,” Snyder said. “The worst thing he can do is stop shooting because his percentages aren’t what we want them to be.”
The allure of Mitchell is his explosiveness, which he showed during the preseason in a game against the Lakers. He also wound up as the leading scorer against the Clippers, notching 19 points despite missing nine of his first 10 shots in the game. Snyder said those bursts are something the Jazz can’t get much from elsewhere.
What he’s more concerned with is Mitchell’s selection: He has no problem with him taking a wide-open three (despite that Mitchell is only 3 for 18 this year), but Snyder would like to see him taking less “tough shots,” ones in which Mitchell forces his way into the lane and turns the ball over. It’s worth noting that Mitchell also averages the second-most assists on the team (2.8 apg) and is dishing more than he turns the ball over.
When asked Friday what the staff is doing to address Mitchell’s shooting, Snyder gestured to the other end of the floor where the Louisville product was firing from distance — and making them.
“He’s doing a lot of that stuff with Johnnie Bryant, but it just takes time,” Snyder said. “I just don’t want him to lose his aggressiveness.”
Hood is back in business
When he stepped on a screener’s foot a week ago in Minnesota, Rodney Hood felt a jolt of up his calf and Achilles tendon. Jazz fans weren’t the only ones worried it was serious — he was, too.
“I couldn’t really feel anything back there,” he said. “I tried to put weight on my toes and I felt a real sharp pain throughout my calf.”
There’s still soreness, but Hood has been able to play through it with full range of motion, giving Jazz fans everywhere a reason to sigh relief after watching Hood carried off the Timberwolves court.
Hood led the Jazz with 22 points in the loss to the Suns in his return, but acknowledged that he’s working on becoming more assertive as a scorer when the Jazz need him. He felt he stepped up in the second quarter, but said he could do more.
“There’s going to be times in the game where I need to push through four- or five-minute stretches where I gotta be real aggressive,” he said. “In the third quarter I wanted to do the same thing, but I gotta learn to pick spots where I can exert myself like that.”
Big Baller circus is on its way
This is one year in which the No. 1 overall draft pick isn’t the magnet for the most media attention. Since Lonzo Ball popped up on the draft radar, the former UCLA point guard (and his extremely vocal father) have been a constant topic on sports radio and TV from coast to coast.
Ball’s mere presence has a way of dominating headlines even before games happen: The Wizards got caught up in a war of words earlier this week when Marcin Gortat tweeted that John Wall would “torture” Ball for 48 minutes. The Lakers went on to beat Washington, which acknowledged later it may have been caught up in the Ball hype machine.
The Jazz played the Lakers in the preseason when Ball was still sidelined. But for Saturday’s game against L.A., Snyder was clearly interested in sidestepping the sideshow.
“It’s early enough that things are new to everybody, regardless,” he said. “As far as the attention, publicity and analysis, we’re not looking at Lonzo like that. We just know he’s a good player.”
Bradley heading to G-League
The Jazz’s other first-round pick this year, Tony Bradley, is heading to the Salt Lake City Stars for G-League training camp, the team announced Friday. Bradley hadn’t recorded any appearances since the season began.
The former North Carolina big man wasn’t been expected to contribute much this season, but Snyder emphasized that’s not unusual, citing Rudy Gobert as an example of playing down with the Jazz affiliate as a rookie. In Utah’s own practices, Bradley has impressed, he said.
“Tony’s looked good with a lot of stuff that he’s doing,” Snyder said. “There’s nothing attached to that other than we want to get him minutes and get him to feel good about how he’s playing and practicing.”