To outline my biggest concern with Mitchell, his performance around the rim has gotten significantly worse over the past few years, as I showed before, and right now he is downright pedestrian if not straight up bad finishing close to the rim.
From 0-3 feet (read dunks, short hook shots, and layups):
League average (qualified players only as per Basketball Reference) = 0.654
JI - 0.769 (Ingles best on team by far - 23rd in the league)
JC - 0.744 - (42nd - I expected Clarkson to actually be our best here, he is great at the rim)
RG - 0.735 - (49th - Gobert has the most dunks in the league by a wide margin, but his "layups" not a dunk pull him down dramatically, as he suck at about anything that isn't a dunk)
Those guys are in the top 50 in the entire league, bigs included, for finishing at the rim. Now we have our 2 main ball-handlers.
DM - 0.575 (Mitchell significantly below league average) - 184th in the league
MC - 0.571 - 187th (Conley actually surprised me here, thought he was better than this)
Now let's go one step further out, which would amount to the floaters and short jumpers...
From 3-10 feet (floaters, short jumpers, etc.):
League average (again qualified only as per BR) = 0.425
JI - 0.593 (13th in the league)
MC - 0.559 (24th in the league - Conley redeems himself here. He is a great floater shooter. Nearly at the point he is better off taking the floater, as his at rim is pretty low but of course still slightly better than this mid-range distance)
JC - 0.529 (35th in the league)
And now, our primary scorer.
DM - 0.414 (130th in the league)
This is just bad. No other way to put it. Mitchell is bad from 0-10 feet in. Not just average, but straight up bad.
Before anyone starts saying it is due to defenses focusing on him, Irving, Leonard, Booker, Paul, Beal, Curry, Jokic, Middleton, even Crowder, are all better from 3-10 feet than even Clarkson, and you better believe defenses are focused on most of those guys every bit as hard as Mitchell.
And at the rim Jamal Murray, maybe Mitchell's best comp, finishes at 0.867 rate, 2nd best in the league. And Fox, Leonard, Brown, LaVine, Doncic, Harden, even Lonzo Ball and Westbrook, along with, oh 72 other PGs and SGs are better from 0-3 feet than Mitchell. That is a real problem.
And considering Mitchell shoots nearly 40% of his shots from this distance (55% total inside the 3 pt line, where he is mediocre at best at every distance compared to the rest of the league - 128th in the league at long 2's at 0.356 with league avg at 0.425) that is a big issue for our primary scorer. He needs to be at least average on these shots, where he is really below average, and badly. And he has gotten worse every year he has been in the league. It doesn't help that he is consciously cutting back on his dunk attempts, which really brought his averages up. I get why, save his legs for the playoffs, and I can support that, but it hurts his ability to finish at the rim when he isn't focused on getting there for a dunk attempt, as he is bad at trying to flip it off the backboard or shoot the floater.
Obviously he makes up with that from 3, but in the past 3 games his 3 pt percentage is slipping badly, at 6-29.
He needs to stabilize his efficiency or he will just be a chucker, volume scorer, which could really be problematic when the game is on the line. Hope he figures it out soon.
