The truth is right now guys he’s neither. He’s not Monte Ellis or Evans and he’s not Wade either. We don’t really know at this point.
He is however struggling, which is fine, Donovan is beyond a hard working individual who cares about being the best he can be. What that is is TBD.
Jgolds, the comparison is not a perfect one by any means. Donovan and Evans careers are just not the same as far as the actual experience of it. Stats never tell an entire story.
Donovan is also not Wade right now. We hope he is. We don’t know what happens from here on out. It is entirely possible he isn’t as good as Wade but he will never end up like Evans. He cares too much. Sometimes reality can gut check what we hope for though and it’s really unknown who he ends up being. He’s Donovan Mitchell and we’ll see.
I also think there is an attachment to Donovan as a person and am glad there is, Donovan’s a good man, a hard working kid, who has a great heart. It’s okay to say he really hasn’t looked as good this season, his 3 point shot is in a bad place right now, at times you can see that he knows he is struggling and he’s not as confident. He puts out full effort night in and night out, but you can certainly see he’s scuffling right now. Last night I saw some of the old Donovan for sure, he looked great at moments, got teammates involved, and had a lot of rebounds last night.
He’s trying sooooo hard and cares soooo much. When that free throw bounced out I felt so bad for him. I think decision making is what he needs to work on, along with his 3 point shot some more. Last night when he got the steal off the inbounds down by 2 he dribbled away from Ingles and an open area on the court where he could have composed and gathered to go right into 2 Thunder players who then took it right back from him. He also took that pull up off the bounce 3 (he shoots at 20%)when the Jazz were down 4 and had the advantage on that break to probably get something better. On that last play, you can have whatever opinion you want but he went for the home-run dunk by cocking it back to put some extra juice on it. It’s why Westbrook was able to get it. You can’t watch the replay and see anything else. He thought he had beat everyone, cocked back, and Westbrook recovered. A layup, or even a 2 handed dunk, anything that kept the ball in front of him instead of cocking it back right into Westbrook’s path he scores on that play. It’s strange because Donovan hasn’t tried something aggressive like that hardly at all this year, of course he tries it with the game on the line lol. After that the free throws are just a fluke thing that happens to everyone at some point. Him missing the first that he needed to make and making the second he needed to miss really summed up the Jazz season and quite honestly his so far. Just hasn’t worked out like we had hoped.
Now, he’s young, none of these plays were that big of mistakes, and he will grow and get better, but the difference between good and great is some of those tiny things he could probably do different which are so easy to critique afterwards from an idiot like me on Jazzfanz. I love Don, I have patience for him. Who Don is as a player we will know more about in a couple more seasons.