Donovan Mitchell’s ability to flip a switch and dictate a game is one of the reasons he’s an All-Star

SALT LAKE CITY — There’s this thing that All-Star caliber players can do. There is an internal switch that they can flip, a mental wall that they can traverse when they want to, and when they do — watch out.

Not every basketball player has that power. Donovan Mitchell does.

The Utah Jazz beat the Miami Heat, 116-101, on Wednesday night to head into the All-Star break on a four-game win streak.

They came back from trailing by five points at halftime and turned the game around.

1 of 19

2 of 19

3 of 19

4 of 19

5 of 19

6 of 19

7 of 19

8 of 19

9 of 19

10 of 19

11 of 19

12 of 19

13 of 19

14 of 19

15 of 19

16 of 19

17 of 19

18 of 19

19 of 19

Yes, the bench helped in a second-half push. Yes, Jordan Clarkson continued to be great as a sixth man. Yes, the Jazz started making shots. Yes, they took better care of the ball and played better defense. But it all started with a mental shift from Donovan Mitchell.

He and the rest of the Jazz started out Wednesday night a little sloppy. Three of the Jazz’s nine first-half turnovers belonged to Mitchell. He wasn’t attacking the seams in a deliberate way and, when he did attack, got caught without a Plan B or help behind him.

“There’s a point in the game where you can go one of two ways,” he said after the game. “Put the pressure on them and keep it going, or you can get teams on their heels and then relax and let them gain the momentum...I made it a focus to keep getting to the rim and put the pressure on them.”

It was that offensive aggressiveness from Mitchell and attention to detail on the defensive end to open the second half that gave the Jazz a jolt of energy and the boost they needed. The rest of the team seemed to follow suit and, slowly but surely, the Jazz put the Heat away.

Scoring eight of his game-high 26 points in the third quarter, Mitchell did not turn the ball over a single time in the second half, and rounded out his game with five rebounds, four assists and two steals.

“When he does that, usually other things begin to open up,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said of Mitchell’s focus on attacking. “If you keep trying to play the right way and do that, things break through and it did for him tonight.”

Mitchell’s ability to dictate the tone of a game is no doubt one of the reasons that he was selected as a member of the 2020 All-Star team.

Even now-teammate Jordan Clarkson, who had only seen Mitchell as an opponent until the midseason acquisition that brought Clarkson to the Jazz, has noticed Mitchell’s growth as a player and how much of a leader he has become on the court.

“He’s grown so much as a player,” Clarkson said. “Picking his spots and getting other people involved. It’s just been great to see him grow into what he is right now.”

Like Snyder said, when Mitchell flips the switch during a game and starts to attack more and takes it upon himself to change a game, it’s not just something that impacts his own performance.

Defenses are required to pay special attention to Mitchell when he is in attack mode and it’s been something that his teammates continue to remind him of.

“I keep telling him that when he’s attacking he’s pretty hard to stop,” Rudy Gobert said. “They have to do it as a team and he’s able to draw a lot of fouls and put us in the bonus pretty early. After that we can just keep doing the same thing over and over.”

The development of that mental switch and the ability to take his game to the next level is an important milestone in Mitchell’s career, and it’s one that should be noted and applauded.

The next step is knowing how to bring that same type of mental fortitude into a game from beginning to end. Dictating the tone of a game through 48 minutes rather than waiting until the team needs it to happen is often the difference between good and great, or great and elite players.

In just his third year, All-Star Donovan Mitchell has become a player that can change a game purely based on where he focuses his energy and what attitude he brings to the court. That next leap is very possibly right around the corner.