Donovan Mitchell, as an official resident of Utah, is eligible for jury duty.
And he received a jury duty summons in the mail this week, asking him to serve from Jan. 7 through Feb. 1. Unfortunately, the Jazz play 13 games during that stretch, so Mitchell hoped to get out of the service this time.
"I wanted to do it, to be honest with you,” Mitchell told UtahJazz.com. “When I got it, I was a little nervous. ... What did I do to get a court letter? Then I opened it. My mom was my first call. What do I do? I’ve never had one of these before.”
But an attorney from Larry H. Miller Sports and Entertainment sent a letter to Utah courts to get it sorted out. And it was: Mitchell has been excused from service, at least for now.
Grayson Allen back and forth
In the off-day on Wednesday, Jazz rookie Grayson Allen was sent to the G League Salt Lake City Stars, to play in their away game against the Texas Legends. He performed reasonably well, scoring 14 points on 4of 9 shooting (3 of 8 from the 3-point line) in the Stars' comeback win.
For Snyder, though, the important thing was that Allen got a chance to play.
“There’s just a lot of value to game experience and repetition. For us, right now, it’s been very difficult for us to even practice. I like that our guys embrace it,” Snyder said. “Tony Bradley’s been playing there, and you can just see his improvement, and it’s through repetition. I like our players' frame of mind to be able to recognize the opportunity to compete.”
Allen was called up ahead of Thursday’s game against the Rockets, flying back to SLC for the game.
James Harden and the pull-up three
James Harden is a terrific pull-up 3-point shooter, maybe the best in NBA history at simply dribbling the ball and firing away without a screen. He’s shooting nearly 40 percent on those contested step-back threes this year, essentially it’s an offense by itself.
But it wasn’t always this way. Harden’s developed his pull-up three game from just a minor part of his game five seasons ago to the primary way he shoots the ball now:
This season, it’s gotten to the point where he hardly takes any catch-and-shoot threes at all. But hey, maybe that makes sense: Harden shoots significantly better from long range when he dribbles than when he doesn’t. Last season, when he took seven or more dribbles leading up to a three, he shot 40.6 percent. On catch and shoot attempts? Just 33.1 percent.
“You can play great defense for 23 seconds and make one mistake and that could be it,” Mitchell said.
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