Placing tags like this on a rookie is reckless. Mitchell improved his 3-pt shooting each year in college and led the Big-12 in eFG% last year while shooting 44.7% on three’s on high volume
And now he’s a 23.5 year-old who has played 1266 NBA minutes (significantly more than he played in his one good shooting season in college) and put up .407 fg / .316 3fg / .561 ft.
His 3FG% progression from age 19 to 23 now looks like this: .288, .324, .447, .316. Which of these looks like the anomaly?
Before you answer, note that over the same period his progression in FT% (which tends to correlate better than any other metric to sustainable shooting in young players) looks like this: .677, .663, .641, .561.
Based on what we’ve seen to date, Cellar Door’s description “short guard who can’t shoot” (at a high NBA level, anyway) doesn’t seem like unreasonable shorthand to me. He could certainly improve — and by all accounts he has the crazy high work ethic to do so. But I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a 23 year old with those FT shooting numbers who became a great NBA shooter.
Perhaps even more alarming than the mediocre shooting are the atrociously low rates of drawing fouls (0.7 ft per 36 minutes) and rebounding (3.1 reb per 36). Unlike shooting, those are skills that don’t tend to improve much in young players, particularly ones that are already 23.5 year old fully grown men.
Based on what we’ve see to date, I’d definitely put him in the category of “mediocre talent,” even given his stellar on-ball D and sterling character.
I like Sabonis a lot, but I also think Sac just got rid of by far the best of their four guards.