Donovan Mitchell dunking isn’t exactly newsworthy even at this point of his very young NBA career: The 6-foot-3 Jazz rookie won the dunk contest during All-Star Weekend, after all. But then he did this in the fourth quarter Wednesday night against the Rockets, and now we have to talk about it.
It was fairly impressive no matter the camera angle.
Even more impressive, perhaps, was Mitchell’s perfectly nonchalant response when asked about the in-traffic putback of his own miss: “To be honest with you, I was just trying to shoot a floater and grab a rebound, but I just happened to be up there,” he told reporters, per ESPN. “So I figured, why not come down with it?”
“That was my first one really on [national] TV,” Mitchell continued, perhaps forgetting his dunk-contest crown. “I had a few like that, but that was pretty cool in the playoffs to be able to do that.”
Mitchell’s slam came during a game-deciding 16-2 run for Utah, a spurt in which the first-year shooting guard from Louisville contributed to all but one point. He actually had a kind of a lousy shooting night — 6 of 21 — but he also tied John Stockton’s Jazz playoff record with 11 assists in Utah’s 116-108 win over the top-seeded Rockets, sending their Western Conference semifinal series back to Salt Lake City tied at a game apiece.
Not everyone was impressed, however.
“His midair decision should have been to get back on transition defense,” Jazz teammate Joe Ingles told reporters, elevating his tongue-in-cheek game. “Guarantee you that’s in the film session tomorrow. … I don’t know what his midair decision was because I’ve never been in that situation. And I never will be. But yeah, just get back in transition defense. That’s all he needs to know.”
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