Ethan Khoza breaks down why Donovan Mitchell is nearly impossible to guard. Mitchell uses ball screens to set up deceptive pass-fakes that freeze defenders, varies his pace to catch teams off-guard, and finishes with inside-shoulder moves that create scoring chances or open teammates.
Chapters
Over the past few seasons, Donovan Mitchell has been one of the best guards in the NBA, especially with the ball in his hands. And with his move over to the Cavaliers, I wanted to take a deep dive into his game, break some things down and look at things that he does really well, that players can take away implement into their own game and become much more effective on the court. Let's get into it. Donovan Mitchell is not only one of the highest usage ball screen players NBA, but he's also one of the highest rated ones as well. I want to highlight a couple things that make him really, really good in these situations. The first being the most obvious part, which is that he's able to shoot the ball in these situations. He can hit threes, you can hit mid range pull ups. That forces defenses to have to respect that, which opens up everything else for him. Obviously Donovan Mitchell is one of the most explosive athletes in the NBA, but it's that combined with the fact that he knows when to use that explosiveness and when to relax the that makes him so unpredictable and so hard for defenders to stop. He plays with elite pace in ball screen situations. A lot of times when he comes off of screens he's only going maybe 40 or 50%. But when he decides to hit that top gear and get to 100%, he always has that split second advantage on that defender and that puts that defender in an incredibly tough spot. And he constantly does this to exploit the defense. And this is something that a lot of players can take away and add to their game is understanding that it's okay to play slow, it's okay to be relaxed, because that makes your explosion, explosiveness, that makes your top speed so much more effective and it makes you so much more unpredictable and difficult to guard. The reason why this especially matters when it comes to ball screens is because there's almost always going to be an advantage for the offense. But sometimes it requires a little bit of patience for the defense to decide what they're going to take away, therefore giving you an open option. And he's great at being patient and sometimes even letting the defense make the decision for him. And this understanding of pace goes far beyond ball screens with him as well. Especially in these one on one ISO situations. He's going that defender up by being relaxed and then at some point hitting that 100%, getting to those low angles to try and sell that drive. And if they have to flip their hips to turn and recover, he's great at getting to a stop and being able to hit that shot over them. An area where Donovan Mitchell really excels is when it comes to his pickups on his drives. And this is super important, especially for a player his size, because it allows them to fit through small gaps, helps him to exploit gap defenders depending on how they play him, and it really lets him utilize his strength on his drives. There are a few different kinds of pickups that he uses. He uses the high pickup and also get to the tuck pickup, or sometimes called the football pickup, where he'll pin the ball against his body as he's driving through a gap. But the type of pickup that I really want to focus on here is his ability to get to the low pickup. He does a great job at killing that ball as close to the ground as possible, so it becomes almost impossible for taller defenders to get anywhere near the ball. This is one of the reasons he's so good at splitting gaps, is because he's able to get the ball so low on these drives that there's not much defenders can do. Considering how strong he is. A lot of players struggle with being able to drive through gaps. Donovan Mitchell is a great person to watch and study to see exactly how to do this at a very high level. One thing that makes Donovan Mitchell so hard to stop, especially in pick and roll situations, is how deceptive he is coming off this screen. He's playing at a slow pace and he really stares. Rudy Gobert and give us that pass fake to draw in that tag defender, which then creates a long closeout which frees up Orisso Neil for a three. And as you'll see in these clips here, he does a great job of exploiting that gap defender, either by slowing himself down and forcing to play that gap to create a driving kick look for his teammate, or by using pass fakes to get him to commit to somewhere else to free somebody up, or using that pass fake to create a driving lane for himself. Another little thing you'll notice is that he loves getting to an inside shoulder finish because it throws off that defender's timing, so it's harder for longer defenders to be able to time it up and block him. It also allows him to drive very, very fast into those finishes, which again helps him play to his elite athleticism. Let me know your thoughts below. Make sure you drop a Like and subscribe. If you're new, click the top link in my description below to get my free Elite Perimeter Scorer workout. Appreciate you guys for watching and supporting. Talk to you guys soon. Peace.
