The Jazz’s approach to Donovan Mitchell’s growth is paying off during the playoff push

The Utah Jazz media team has carefully collected a page of quotes from NBA players and coaches about Donovan Mitchell’s rookie season.

LeBron James talked about how Mitchell has “a lot of game.” Steve Kerr spoke glowingly about his swagger. Damian Lillard called him the rookie of the year.

The Jazz treasure these endorsements of Mitchell, a 6-foot-3 dynamo who has catapulted himself into the race for rookie of the year. But one of the biggest of all came before the season even started.

It was in July, when the Jazz were reeling from the loss of Gordon Hayward in free agency, and Mitchell was leading a Jazz Summer League squad in its third game against the now-villianized Boston Celtics. Mitchell was switched onto fellow rookie Jayson Tatum in the second half, locking him up and putting a spin move on him that knocked him to his feet.

Mitchell would score only eight points that night, but general manager Dennis Lindsey got a text from Rudy Gobert: “Hey, I like this guy.”

For a moment, step away from Mitchell’s oft-quoted refrain he “never expected” any of this to happen — stepping into the role of Utah’s leading scorer, winning the Slam Dunk Contest, and selling out jerseys and driving up hope for a fan base that had lost so much.

The Jazz didn’t expect all that either, but they expected something good. And while the rest of the NBA views Mitchell as an out-of-nowhere story, his success has a lot to do with his gifts, and how the front office and coaching staff have been willing to let him roll with them. There’s been ways the Jazz have protected Mitchell, but in many other situations, they’ve been willing to see how high he can fly.

At a certain point, Mitchell stopped guessing how far he could go as well.

“Once I got here in the NBA and started to do well, I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I can do more,’” Mitchell said. “I don’t think of myself as a rookie anymore. I think of myself as a guy who continues to learn. Certain mistakes I make that some rookies do make can’t happen. That’s what I expect of myself.”

That doesn’t mean that Mitchell is trying to shed his rookie duties of toting gear for veterans. He’s not wiggling his way out of the pink backpack with butterfly wings he’s worn since October.

But there’s a maturity about him — some of which he alread possessed, some of which the Jazz have helped sculpt. Mitchell has risen from off-the-bench energy-booster, to starter, to leading scorer (20.4 points a game). He’s assumed more ball-handling duties and more of the scoring load as the season has gone on.

“He’s been learning a lot. He came and took the game by storm and keeps going,” Ricky Rubio said after Mitchell scored 26 points against the Lakers on Tuesday. “He doesn’t seem like a rookie at all. He’s learning and he listens, and that’s great.”

The Jazz liked Mitchell long before his pre-draft workout in Salt Lake City: He had caught Lindsey’s eye when he played his son Jake’s Baylor team as a Louisville Cardinal. The Jazz front office had watched video of him and seen a workout in Chicago.

But there’s a difference, Lindsey emphasized, between knowing measurements and watching a player on film and seeing him in a workout — akin to looking at pictures of the Grand Canyon, then standing at the edge and appreciating the view. The Jazz could see how low Mitchell could dribble to the ground, how smoothly he could move, how high he could jump. It was from that workout Lindsey and other staffers felt Mitchell, introduced to the right coaching and development, had some of the best untapped potential in the draft.

“You could tangibly feel his athletic pop,” Lindsey said. “While he wasn’t and still isn’t totally refined and precise, we felt if we could get him a couple different skills, clean up a few things, the athletic pop would allow it to transfer.”

Mitchell talked about initially earning playing time thanks to his defense, but at the same time he was pushing his offensive game. From starting out 3 for 18 from deep, Mitchell now has 179 3-pointers on the season and is threatening the rookie record held by Lillard (185). He became a more patient driver into the paint, and established better vision for kick-outs.

That doesn’t mean Mitchell hasn’t failed. He thinks of the game against Philadelphia where he was 3 for 21, or the three different games in October when he was 1 for 7 from the field. He thinks of the eight turnovers against Houston, or the six against Atlanta.

Mitchell has failed plenty of times. But the Jazz haven’t pulled back their expectations in those cases — they’ve pushed him forward.

“You see flashes where, ‘Hey, he can do that. Maybe he didn’t do it tonight, but I think he’ll be able to do it soon,’” coach Quin Snyder said. “There hasn’t been a fear. I’ve never gotten into the rookie thing. I think players are players. Some of them are more mature at certain ages than others, and Donovan was hungry to be challenged. I felt that was the best way to handle it, throw him out there and challenge him in certain situations.”

Teams still blitz Mitchell late in games, and he still has turnovers in those situations. But it’s gotten better, Snyder said, and he’s gained a better sense for what passes to make against double teams. He’s also been better at having big third quarters — against the Pelicans, against the Timberwolves, against the Lakers in recent games — and picking up his energy after halftime.

“That showed to me some maturity there,” Snyder said. “I think mentally he knows more now what shots are gonna come, and his reads have improved in those situations. I think that makes him more decisive.”

Other things have come more easily to Mitchell as well — he got to appreciate it recently when he was able to watch film of himself against the Lakers during a game in October when he was coming off the bench. He’s gained the ability to change certain aspects of plays if he sees vulnerability in defenses.

It’s anyone’s guess what comes next. But to Mitchell, the same approach that has brought him this far will be the one that will get him to the next level.

“The biggest things is playing through my mistakes, and they’ve let me do that,” he said. “Just hard work. I still have a lot to learn, and I’m still making mistakes. … It’s allowed me to correct and gain things that I didn’t have at the beginning of the year.”