Donovan Mitchell usually puts on a show during pregame warmups. But on Tuesday night, the former Slam Dunk champ stayed below the rim.
“I just didn’t have any legs,” he said.
But, somehow, Mitchell found them when he and the Utah Jazz needed them most Tuesday night. Trailing the Orlando Magic by seven with under five minutes left in the fourth quarter, Mitchell turned the momentum at Vivint Smart Home Arena with a highlight-reel hammer. The Jazz guard crossed over to his left hand at the top of the 3-point line, drove into the lane, and took off from well outside the restricted area. Magic center Nicola Vucevic, even at 7-feet tall, wasn’t able to keep Mitchell away from the rim.
The dunk even surprised Mitchell himself.
“I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t know how in God’s name I dunked the ball,” he said. “Because I didn’t have legs the whole game.”
At shootaround on Tuesday morning, Mitchell told reporters he has made a conscious decision to jump and dunk less this year, for multiple reasons.
“Most of the times it’s to find the open guy. With me having jumped so much my past two years in the league, everybody’s expecting it, so you never know what opens up on the offensive end and it helps being able to distribute,” Mitchell said.
It would also preserve his body.
“That’s one of the things I’m working on now, working with the coaches and whatnot,” Mitchell said. “Just to be able to do little things that make it easier on my body, make it easier for me to continue to go out there and then when I need to use my athleticism for sure.”
Mitchell needed it late on Tuesday night.
“With a guy like [Vucevic], you can’t lay it up,” he said. “You’ve got to go up and try to dunk it.”
The Jazz guard joked that he hoped one day defenders would decide to simply clear the lane for him.
“I’m hoping to get to the point where they treat guys like LeBron and stuff like that, where they just move out of the way,” he said. “But I’m so small people still want to jump, so I’ve just got to keep getting up there.”
Mitchell’s dunk ignited a 19-7 run over the game’s final 4:31—with Mitchell and forward Bojan Bogdanovic scoring 17 of those points.
“Sometimes, you’ve just got to fight through it and play through fatigue,” Mitchell said after the game. “I think we all did that. I think a lot of us were a little tired at the end, but we fought through it.”