{"id":744843,"date":"2022-04-25T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=744843"},"modified":"2022-04-25T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T01:00:09","slug":"built-for-the-postseason-donovan-mitchell-continues-elevate-in-the-postseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/built-for-the-postseason-donovan-mitchell-continues-elevate-in-the-postseason\/","title":{"rendered":"Built For The Postseason: Donovan Mitchell Continues Elevate in the Postseason"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Some players are built for the playoffs. This is the case for Utah Jazz guard <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=donovan+mitchell\" target=\"_blank\">Donovan Mitchell<\/a>, who is averaging at least 30 points per game in the postseason for the third consecutive year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the 2021-22 regular season, Mitchell <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/leagues\/NBA_2022_leaders.html\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/leagues\/NBA_2022_leaders.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">finished<\/a> top 10 in scoring with 25.9 points per game. He shot 35.5 percent from deep in 9.8 attempts per contest. With 20.5 field goal attempts per game, he shot 44.8 percent from the floor overall.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the playoffs, he\u2019s been an even more elite scorer. Mitchell has the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/basketball.realgm.com\/nba\/playoffs\/team\/NBA\/0\/stats\/2022\/Totals\/All\/points\/All\/desc\/1\/Playoffs\" target=\"_blank\">third-most total points <\/a>of any player in the playoffs\u2014he\u2019s produced 121 points through four games, good for 30.3 per game.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"qme\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83d\udd77 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/spidadmitchell?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@spidadmitchell<\/a> \ud83d\udd77 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PyNXdVPpg4\">pic.twitter.com\/PyNXdVPpg4<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/utahjazz\/status\/1518004459942543360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 23, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Interestingly, he\u2019s only shooting 39.6 percent from the floor and 23.5 percent from distance, meaning there\u2019s still room for improvement. He\u2019s been great in this opening series against the Dallas Mavericks, and while he\u2019s ultimately scored 30 or more points in three out of four games thus far, it\u2019s taken him a bit to get going. Mitchell has gotten off to a slow start in most of the matchups in this opening series, and he&#8217;s averaging 11.0 points in the first half (21st in NBA) and 19.3 points in the second half (first in NBA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With that in mind, he&#8217;s been outstanding coming out of the half, averaging 10.8 points in the third quarter, which is tied for the second-most in the League this postseason. If Mitchell can start producing in both halves, he\u2019ll be on a whole new level.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the Game 3 win, Mitchell spoke about how he can be better and the support and trust he has from everyone around him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;My teammates and my coaches trust me. The ball&#8217;s going to be in my hands, and I&#8217;ve got to make the right play.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">what&#39;s better than this <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YM9yo4fsVv\">pic.twitter.com\/YM9yo4fsVv<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/utahjazz\/status\/1518007333812457472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 23, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Putting up points in the playoffs isn\u2019t new for Mitchell. He always hits a new level when the postseason comes around. Over the past three seasons, he\u2019s been one of the League\u2019s most prolific scorers in the postseason.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>2020: 36.3 PPG<\/li><li>2021: 32.3 PPG<\/li><li>2022: 30.3 PPG<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The series is tied at 2-2, but one team will take the lead on Monday night. In December, the<strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/donovan-mitchell-slam-235\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/donovan-mitchell-slam-235\/\" target=\"_blank\"> SLAM 235<\/a><\/strong> cover star spoke about the Jazz&#8217;s playoff pursuits and how they need to &#8220;perform&#8221; when it counts.<br><br>\u201cWe\u2019re a pretty good team, [but] we\u2019ve got to perform when it\u2019s time,&#8221;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/donovan-mitchell-slam-235\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/donovan-mitchell-slam-235\/\" target=\"_blank\"> <strong>Mitchell told SLAM<\/strong><\/a>. &#8220;That\u2019s no secret; that\u2019s the biggest thing. We\u2019re a good regular season team, and we\u2019ve had success in the playoffs, but we haven\u2019t had the ultimate success.&#8221;<br><br>Game 5 is set to take place in Dallas and will be just the second game of the series in which Luka Doncic suits up.\u00a0At the rate Mitchell is going, the battle between him and Doncic will be spectacular the rest of the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some players are built for the playoffs. This is the case for Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell, who is averaging at least 30 points per game in the postseason for the third consecutive year.\u00a0 During the 2021-22 regular season, Mitchell finished top 10 in scoring with 25.9 points per game. He shot 35.5 percent from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":414,"featured_media":744844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62699,18,63826,62493,62721],"tags":[106,9617,13008],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-744843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dallas-mavericks","category-nba","category-news","category-newswire","category-utah-jazz","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-utah-jazz"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744843"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744969,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744843\/revisions\/744969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744843"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=744843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}