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DETROIT — Donovan Mitchell doesn’t remember what he said. He doesn’t remember exactly how many times he said it. He just knows there was a fan in the corner that wouldn’t stop talking.
If that fan was hoping to get into Mitchell's head, he succeeded. If he was hoping that would help the Detroit Pistons win, he failed miserably.
“Thank you to whoever that was,” Kyle Korver said.
There could be a lot of things you could point to in Mitchell’s second-half masterpiece on Saturday in Detroit in Utah's 110-105 win. But it has to start with the man in the corner.
“I stopped listening to the guy in the corner,” Mitchell said. “He said something to me and it really just snapped for me. I don’t remember what he said to me but after that, I started being aggressive. It shouldn’t take someone saying something to me for me to play how I did, but that’s what happened.”
How did Mitchell play?
In the second half, Mitchell scored 24 points, dished out four assists and grabbed four rebounds. He controlled the tempo, led huge Utah runs and had answers to just about every big Detroit shot.
But what made it more impressive was how poorly Mitchell’s night had gone before that run. He went into halftime with just 2 points. And after two bad turnovers and a poorly missed 3-point shot to start the second half, he was pulled out of the game.
Yes, the Jazz’s face of the franchise was pulled less than three minutes into the second half.
“I don’t think he came out ready to defend,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “He was playing hard, but just his mindset (wasn’t right) and usually that bleeds over into his offense. I just felt like he needed to step back, sit down for a second and watch. That gives you a little more clarity and that can kind of strengthen your resolve.”
Mitchell didn’t sit long — a fourth foul on Joe Ingles pushed him quickly back into the game; and once he did, it was like he was a different player.
He was controlled on drives, his vision was phenomenal (a cross-court pass to Korver for a 3-pointer highlighted that) and he simply took control of the game. With Mitchell cooking, the Jazz used a 19-4 run to blow right past the Pistons in the fourth quarter.
Later in the game, when the Pistons made a late push, it was Mitchell who put the game on ice; he hit a 3-pointer, drove for a layup and nailed a midrange jumper all in the final two minutes.
Before the game, Mitchell had two separate film studies. The first was with Snyder; the second was with assistant Johnnie Bryant. That effort showed how motivated Mitchell is to learn. And his in-game turnaround demonstrated the same thing.
“You don’t have to wait till the end of the game to learn,” Snyder said. "I just referenced that and you know to keep at it, keep attacking and keep reading and think about what’s happening out there. That’s a tough balance to be able to think and read and also attack. It’s not like an answer on a test, where you get the answer and then you have it. Every game is different, every half is different.”
There’s been constant learning from Mitchell this season. He’s had to deal with defenses throwing different looks at him and playing with the weight of lofty expectations. If Saturday’s second half is any indication, he’s starting to figure it out.
“We ask a lot of him — as a young guy, we ask a lot of him,” Korver said. “As good as he is, he’s still finding his way and kinda learning what it takes to be great every night in an 82-game season. I’m really impressed with him as a person and his willingness to take on the responsibility of being the best player for a franchise.
"It’s a lot, and he handles it well. He didn’t have his best first half, and maybe the beginning of the third quarter, but he decided he'd had enough and took over the game.”
Or at least, he decided he had heard enough from the man in the corner.
