The recent winner of the NCAA tournament, Davion Mitchell, from Baylor, is one of the biggest prospects of the future NBA draft. The 22-year-old exterior of 1m83 (without shoes), -which also has the same agent as its namesake Donovan Mitchell-, had posted in the finals against Jalen Suggs and his Gonzaga statistics of 15 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists in 35 minutes of play. Unlike Mitchell, Suggs should be in the top 5 draft picks. Mitchell should instead end up around 10th place.
So what makes our friend Davion the most “NBA ready” player of the next draft? As an outside, his defense, his liveliness on the first presses, his shooting out of dribbling and his incredible reliability in the shoot. A nuance to highlight, his percentages on free throws: in 94 NCAA games, Mitchell turns 65% on free throws (on 175 attempts, which remains very little), figures that should alert for an outside that tends will professionalize in the NBA.
The native of Hinesville, Georgia has come a long way. In three years he has gone from a little used player at Auburn to one of Baylor’s three stars, along with Jared Butler and Soft Teague. At Aubrun, he played about 17 minutes per game, averaging around 6 points per game. There, the Baylor staff made him land, seeing in him a robust player despite his relative smallness, as well as a very good defender in the making. His shooting, close to very bad, was to improve greatly, but his new university made the bet.
“We needed a point guard who could do interceptions because we are doing zone defense and we wanted to become more modern, by making more switches,” said Jakus. “He just checked all of those boxes.”
Despite a complicated start there, the staff at Auburn University have fond memories of their former protégé.
“An amazing kid,” said Steven Pearl, assistant coach at Auburn. “He worked like crazy. Great teammate. Very easy to train. I loved this kid to death ”.
In Auburn, Mitchell was the second knife in the lead, behind Jared Harper. There, he was never a starter. Transferred to Baylor, the player has transformed. Supporting Jared Butler on the half court, Mitchell also has an unconditional love for defense, one of his great assets. Baylor assistant coach John Jakus for ESPN says the player is “relentless.”
“If we’re playing 1 on 1, I just want to keep,” Mitchell told us of his love for defense. “Even if he scores, it’s like I really want to defend, I want to improve. You must be able to defend now. Anyone can score baskets. What makes you different? That’s what made me different this whole draft, I think I’m playing the best defense in the country. ”
He’s not wrong, since he was voted “2020-21 National Defensive Player of the Year”, just that. Very big fan of video clips of NBA players allowing him to perfect and work his game (in particular of Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday, Ja Morant or Chris Paul), Davion Mitchell has excellent balance, good technique, and above all a “grinta” allowing him to wreak havoc in the defensive phase. Mitchell therefore speaks his defense, which impresses Don MacLean, former NBA veteran, who works today with the future player the big league.
“He’s been amazing,” said MacLean. “He’s the best backcourt defenseman I’ve ever had, and I’ve been doing this for 15, 17 years. He is the defensive elite for his size ”.
Alongside MaCio Teague, who transferred to Baylor at the same time as him, Mitchell became obsessed with perfecting his craft. He spends his time studying NBA point guard. One week was the pick-and-roll of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the next, Chris Paul’s work with the Suns.
“I love basketball so I love watching this stuff [les clips vidéos]”Mitchell said. “It’s fun for me. It’s not “Oh, I have to watch movies”, it’s “I can watch movies now!”.
Baylor accompanied him in this hard work. The staff of the team has dedicated 2 assistant coaches to support Mitchell, whether in his study of players, or during his early morning arrivals at training, to work on his three-point shot. The staff’s objective was to provide Mitchell with all the information necessary to dissect any type of pick-and-roll blanket, in particular thanks to the studies made in video sessions.
“What we did for him was we tried to make him a quarterback,” adds Jakus. “This is the thing he has bought into more than other people who think that feeling cannot be learned. He thought the feeling could be learned, and he became addicted to learning it. ”
This learning served him at the time of the March Madness tournament, where Mitchell excelled in these PnR readings. During this tournament, Jakus describes him as “floating above the ground”. With the baton, he managed this phase of play perfectly, rejecting the screen to go driver, dismissing on a free teammate in the corner, serving his inside having started the PnR for a layup or a dunk.
“I’ve been doing this move since I was in college,” Mitchell said. “You can ask anyone. If you look at my times at AAU, high school, college, Georgia Stars, I do this movement every time. ”
Offensively, Mitchell is a very high level player. No player was more efficient than him last season, with 1.14 points scored on average by 100 possessions, with several strings to his bow: the pick-and-roll as previously mentioned, his three-point shooting in constant progression, his shooting halfway. He’s become one of the best dribbling players out of the 2021 draft, and when you compare with his early college career, the progress is mind-boggling. His assists / ball loss ratio was 2.3 last season. On the mental side, the qualifiers of competitive, hardworking and badass come up very often when it comes to evoking the player of Baylor and this is partly where the comparison with his namesake in Jazz comes in. Like him, he (already) exceeded expectations via a rather unexpected progression.
“I think the real similarity is in their human qualities, that’s what matters,” MacLean said. “How they treat others on the floor, how they treat the staff, this maturity to be a good guy in addition to being a very good basketball player. Donovan was out of the ordinary in this regard, and Davion is at his level. ”
“Davion realized that he was really good and that he was very close to excellence,” said Jakus. “He realized he could be great, the switch came on and it was over. He doesn’t want to be good. He wants to be the best. ”
A detail remains however as to his case during the future draft: his age. Davion Mitchell will be, unfortunately for him if we can put it that way, 23 years old on September 5, which could well lead a good number of franchises to be reluctant in the perspective of drafting him very high. Knowing that the last similar cases do not make dream at all. The list of players drafted at Mitchell’s age or older in recent years is made up of Randy Foye, Shane Battier, Buddy Hield, Wesley Johnson, Ekpe Udoh and Rafael Araujo. However, still according to John Jakus of Baylor, unlike his predecessors, his former player will have, despite his age, still a large margin of progress when he arrives in the NBA.
“He has an ability to improve and for me that potential is more important than being 18, huge stature and potential, because you don’t know if he has the ability to improve. ‘improve’, argued Jakus. “You know for sure, when you hire Davion, that he has the capacity to improve.”
“I obviously think I’m the best point guard in this category,” said Mitchell. “It’s just a matter of trust. Everyone will think so. I just want to be the most ready. I want to be the closest guy in the draft. I just want to get better every day. ”
Via ESPN
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