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Deseret News - Jazz
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SALT LAKE CITY — There was no sense of frustration on Donovan Mitchell's face, and his head certainly wasn't hung low.
Even after a rough individual offensive performance, Mitchell slipped on his signature pair of Stance socks and Famous Nobodys sweatsuit with a smile on his face.
"We won the game," Mitchell reminded a scrum of reporters.
Although Utah's defense held the defending champion Golden State Warriors to 40 percent shooting during a 108-103 win on Wednesday in Vivint Arena, Mitchell went 5-for-26 with 17 points, six assists, five rebounds, two steals and six turnovers. He said he was headed to the practice facility afterward to put up more jumpers, although no team practice was scheduled for the next day.
As a rookie, he probably wouldn't have handled such a performance in the same manner, but the 22-year-old is slowly learning to silence the noise. It's the reason why his signature Stance socks feature a "Zip It" emoji, which he sported after the Golden State victory, to "quiet all the haters."
"You gotta love the Twitter general managers and coaches," Mitchell said. "That's all I've been hearing, including my mom.
"My mom is funny, she's like 'did you hear this? Did you hear that?' Yeah, I've heard it all, Mom, but at the end of the day, I'm not upset," he continued. "We won the game and I think that's the story. We won the game. You can talk about Jae (Crowder), Joe (Ingles), Rudy (Gobert) and all that. That's where it's at, we defended and played defense."
Mitchell is averaging 21.0 points, 3.2 assists and 3.1 rebounds in his second season compared to his 20.5 points, 3.7 assists and 3.7 assists during his solid rookie campaign. However, his shooting percentage has slightly dipped from 43.7 percent to 42.3 percent through the first 27 games of 2018-19, which has drawn criticism. His 3-point percentage is also slightly down this year from 34.0 percent to 30.3 percent, with defenses now keyed in on him.
The experience of last year's highs and lows has taught him how to handle good and bad nights, though. Utah will play at Portland next on Friday.
"I had a whole 90-something games to kind of go through," Mitchell said. "I think understanding that we've got another one in two days and not really worrying and the fact that we won. It's not like we lost.
"We won the game, so at the end of the day, I'm not going to hang my head over this," he added. "In the moment I will, but it's no need, we won the game and now we've got to go ahead and do it in Portland."
Utah entered the Golden State matchup having lost four of its previous five contests, but snapped the two-game losing streak with the victory against the Warriors. Even at times when Mitchell appeared flustered on the court, his teammates Ricky Rubio, Joe Ingles and Derrick Favors were there to pick him up.
Rudy Gobert finished with 17 points, 14 rebounds and four blocks to spearhead the defensive performance, while guys like Jae Crowder added 18 points off the bench with five treys, plus Ingles and Korver both hit four treys apiece to combine for another 32 points.
"Other guys just step up," said Favors. "(Donovan's) a good player, he's going to have good games and bad games, but I think the most important thing was guys stepped up.
"Kyle (Korver) stepped up, Joe Ingles, Rudy, Jae and everybody just stepped up and took the load off him a little bit," he said. "We've got a deep team, and hopefully we can keep that up."
Jazz coach Quin Snyder also doesn't want Mitchell to overthink the process. His role on the team is to be a playmaker and put up shots, so they're working to keep him aggressive offensively and not letting the missed shots affect his play on the other end, which wasn't the case against Golden State. Still, the Jazz coaching staff will dissect Mitchell's latest performance and look for ways to prevent those from happening again.
"He knows what we need from him, we need him to score," Snyder said. "He didn't have a good shooting night tonight, but he kept playing, and I think that's what we need from our group is that resiliency that you have to have collectively and Donovan has individually. It's not about any one guy's confidence.
"You find your confidence within the team, and that's what I thought he did tonight," he added. "I thought he had some great defensive possessions where he was locked and running and chasing people all over the floor, and when the ball's not going in, those are the little things you can do to impact the game."
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