In the era of the playmaking wing, the shooting guard position might be making a comeback of its own. Where does the Utah Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell stack up among the league’s best?
A short time ago, it was not uncommon to see several shooting guards ranked among the best players in the National Basketball Association. Longtime Utah Jazz fans especially remember a hyper-competitive, bald-headed shooting guard all-to-well (and none-too-fondly).
The influence of Michael Jordan was pervasive. Following his departure from the NBA, many of the league’s best players played the shooting guard position, with some even meticulously replicating Jordan’s style. Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter were just some of the many score-first off-guards who populated the ranks of the NBA’s elite.
The NBA, it has been said, is a copycat league, and LeBron James has been the new cat to copy since his arrival as the Association’s flagship superstar. His influence has marked the rise of oversized point guards and playmaking wings (an often meaningless distinction) as the league’s premier player archetype.
Still, the game will always be about a bucket, and some of the NBA’s elite shooting guards can still provide them in bunches. Where does the Utah Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell rank among the NBA’s best shooting guards?
For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll be mostly looking at a number of statistics from the 2020-21 NBA season, including each player’s combination of scoring volume and efficiency, according to True Shooting % (TS%). Then, we’ll also be looking at their defensive impact according to two metrics: Defensive Rating and Defensive Box Plus/Minus (DBPM). Finally, we’ll factor in Value Over Replacement Player (VORP).
These are not strict criteria: rather, we’ll use them as guiding principles in these rankings. Here’s how Mitchell stacked up with the Association’s best off-guards.
5. Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown
Even informed readers could be forgiven if they were anticipating a higher placement for Brown on the basis of superior two-way play. According to advanced metrics, they’d be wrong.
Brown’s 2020-21 DBPM trails Mitchell’s, -1.0 to -0.6. In case you’re concerned about the possibility of noise in that stat, his defensive rating also lags behind the Utah Jazz star, 113 to 110. According to the two most effective metric measurements of defensive impact, Donovan Mitchell was a better defender over the 2020-21 season than Brown.
Meanwhile, Brown took a major step forward on offense last season, but he still lags Mitchell by about the margin each’s reputation would suggest. Through 2020-21, Brown scored 24.7 points per game on a 58.6 TS%. Meanwhile, Mitchell contributed 26.4 points per game for the Utah Jazz on a 56.9 TS%.
While Brown’s efficiency was superior, it has to be noted that Brown was actually the second-leading scorer on the Boston Celtics, behind superstar wing Jayson Tatum’s 26.4 points per game. It is fair to assume that Brown was the recipient of less defensive attention and therefore, more wide-open looks than Mitchell, who is Utah’s first offensive option by a considerable margin.
This discrepancy in each player’s role is narrowly reflected by each’s VORP, as Mitchell’s 2.5 mark outpaces Brown’s 2.3 mark. More importantly, Mitchell is being awarded points here for being the centerpiece of the Utah Jazz offense. This is not a blemish on Brown’s career-to-date. The margins at the top are narrow, and had Brown’s reputation as a superior defender been reflected in his metrics, he’d have earned a placement ahead of Mitchell.
Still, the fifth-best shooting guard in the NBA is no designation to sneeze at, and it’s where Brown lands in these rankings.
4. Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker
Ranking Mitchell and Booker is effectively an exercise in futility. These are two of the league’s brightest young stars, and any given observer’s ranking may come down to personal preference.
On offense, Mitchell’s 26.4 points per game for the Utah Jazz over 2020-21 best Booker’s 25.6. However, Booker’s 58.7 TS% exceeds Mitchell’s mark of 56.9. While Mitchell was considerably more effective as a long-range bomber (38.6% accuracy on 8.7 attempts per game vs Booker’s 34.0% on 8.1), Booker’s higher two-point field goal % contributed to his overall superior TS%, as he shot 54.3% on two-point attempts compared to Mitchell’s 47.6%. Likely, this points to Booker’s superior development as a three-level scorer, as he’s developed into the rare modern NBA scorer who effectively weaponizes the midrange jumper.
Scoring doesn’t reflect a significant advantage for either player, as Mitchell generated more volume and Booker scored more efficiently. Therefore, Mitchell’s advantage in defensive metrics stands as the primary reason to rank him ahead of Booker. His -0.6 DBPM is significantly ahead of Booker’s -1.5, and his Defensive Rating of 110 also trumps Booker’s 114.
Furthermore, Mitchell’s VORP of 2.5 is substantially ahead of Booker’s mark of 1.1. Likely, this has to do with Mitchell’s defensive advantages. While neither is known as an elite stopper, Mitchell leverages his physical advantages of length and explosiveness to make a roughly neutral defensive impact for the Utah Jazz, while Booker’s grades out as a slight negative.
These two young men may represent the future of the shooting guard spot. As long as Mitchell makes a stronger defensive impact, he’s the better candidate to usher that future forward.
3. Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell
Here, we land on the Utah Jazz’s prized scoring guard. Obviously, we’ve established Mitchell’s significant statistics in previous slides, by way of comparison.
So consider this slide a tribute to a player who already ranks among the franchise’s all-time elite.
The Utah Jazz acquired Mitchell on draft day in 2017, after the Denver Nuggets selected him 13th overall. In all likelihood, neither franchise anticipated the young guard to explode into the ranks of the NBA’s best players. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what happened.
Mitchell entered the National Basketball Association like a man possessed, and he’s never looked back. His 20.5 points per game over his rookie season represents an elite figure for a rookie, and he’s increased his output in every subsequent season to reach the 26.4 he generated over the 2020-21 season.
At 24-years-old, Mitchell represents the present and the future for the Utah Jazz. His Win Shares (WS) ranked third on the team last season at 6.2, behind Rudy Gobert’s massive 11.3 and Joe Ingles’ 7.0. Here’s where opponents of advanced metrics speak up: Mitchell’s significance to the Jazz’s odds of contending, as their lone volume scorer and number-one offensive option, is clearly higher than a solid role player like Ingels’.
Mitchell could continue to make strides on the defensive end (again, he graded as a virtual non-factor over the 2020-21 regular season) and as a playmaker (although he’s continued to improve in that area, upping his assists per game from 4.3 to 5.2 last season). Nonetheless, he is the most important player on the Utah Jazz, and looks like the third best shooting guard in the NBA on several key measurements.
2. Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal
The NBA’s second-leading scorer at 31.3 points per game over the 2020-21 season, Beal might be the best pure shooting guard in the NBA today. In case the hat is not sufficiently tipped regarding who is ranking number one on this list, we’ll just mention that facial hair was not a variable considered here.
The baby-faced Beal was an assassin throughout the 2020-21 season. That robust points per game mark was buoyed by an elite 59.3 TS%. Beal gets buckets however you like them, with a pure shooting touch that allows him to sink three-pointers with a solid blend of volume and efficiency (34.9% accuracy on 6.2 attempts per game), as well as elite ball-handling that pairs well with a combination of speed and lower body strength that allows him to finish consistently at the rim.
Beal is also an established playmaker. The 4.4 assists per game he posted in 2020-21 actually represented a significant drop-off from the 6.1 per game he averaged in 2019-20. Sharing the backcourt with perennial triple-double machine Russell Westbrook tidily accounts for this discrepancy, but 4.4 is still a solid mark for a score-first off-guard.
If Mitchell holds any advantage over Bradley Beal, it’s on the defensive end. Beal’s DBPM of -1.7 and Defensive Rating of 115 both comfortably trail Mitchell’s marks. Nonetheless, Beal’s significantly better statistics in terms of both volume and efficiency of scoring tipped the scales in the player-to-player comparison here. It is not controversial to claim that offense is more important than defense, and when we’re discussing two lead-scoring guards, it holds doubly true.
Having said that, there is only one player who ranks ahead of Beal at the shooting guard position, and you may not be shocked to learn that it’s his offensive ability that allows him to do so.
1. Brooklyn Nets guard James Harden
So far, we’ve mostly weighed points per game, TS%, DBPM, Defensive Rating and VORP in ranking the NBA’s elite shooting guards in relation to the Utah Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell. Here, we’re going to bend the rules a little bit.
It seems fitting: James Harden has been bending the rules of basketball for a long time.
The 24.6 points per game that the Bearded One averaged last season are, shockingly, less than any player listed in this article. It doesn’t really matter, because the 10.6 assists per game he averaged paced the entire Association, and categorically destroyed any other shooting guard’s marked who is listed here.
We know Harden can score as well as anybody in NBA history. The 34.3 and 36.1 points he scored per game in his previous two seasons for the Houston Rockets typify the cliche of “video game numbers”. This season, Harden adjusted his game to fit with his considerably starrier teammates in Brooklyn.
Those who wish to quarrel over positional designations are free to do so. Indeed, one can easily make the case that Harden was Brooklyn’s point guard last season: even if his own backcourt mate would say so.
Too bad. Basketball reference still lists Harden as a shooting guard, and anyway, positions are distinctly more malleable in the modern NBA. If leading the NBA in assists requires Harden to be listed as a point guard, are we ready to look at Steph Curry, the NBA’s reigning scoring champion, as a shooting guard?
If you are, congratulate yourself for being an open-minded individual. In the meantime, we’ll be maintaining that James Harden still qualifies as the NBA’s supreme shooting guard, regardless of how often he may choose to pass.