Donovan Mitchell has studied his whole life to be an A+ rookie

HOUSTON — Donovan Mitchell’s latest pop quiz lasted more than nine minutes on the Toyota Center floor after a Utah Jazz practice between Games 1 and 2. It was his turn with the media, and for a passing grade, all Mitchell had to do was regurgitate cliches for the corresponding questions in an allotted amount of time. Most rookies do some semblance of that, especially after a Game 1 loss just two days prior.

Most rookies, but not Mitchell. When has a passing grade ever been enough for him?

Mitchell wasn’t down on himself, even though the Jazz were at the time, trailing by a game to the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference semifinals. (They tied the series in Game 2, and Game 3 will be played Friday night.) In a question about how to deal with losing, he flipped the premise entirely.

“The funny thing is, a lot of people have hit me up, saying, keep your head up, keep your head up,” Mitchell told reporters. “But it’s Game 1. My head was never down. I don’t think any of our heads were ever down.”

He’s learning to handle how many people are reaching out to him, even people who he “didn’t know still had my phone number,” Mitchell said with a laugh. One part of that adjustment: he can’t keep staying up until 3 a.m., no matter how many emotions bubble up after games.

More questions: without revealing the game plan, what did he learn? Mitchell gave two examples, both superficial but thoughtful. He was asked about the “not a rookie” chants that Ben Simmons received in his own Game 1. His answer could have made headlines after the two went back and forth in a contentious Rookie of the Year race, but Mitchell settled for something simpler (and extremely likable).

“It’s just funny,” Mitchell said. “Just the kid in me, having fun with this whole thing.”

Kobe Bryant had conducted a film study on Mitchell’s Game 1 performance for ESPN, and Mitchell got asked about that, too. He beamed, and said that he has already watched it twice before recommending the media go seek it out, too. In fact, he’ll even tell you how he came to love Bryant.

“The coolest thing about that is I wasn’t a Kobe fan growing up,” Mitchell admitted. “I didn’t understand at the time his presence and how hard he worked on his game. Being in my first year in the league, he has become one of my favorite players to watch.”

That’s a piece of himself that Mitchell didn’t have to share, and chose to anyway.

“He’s just giving a little bit of himself, which makes him feel very genuine and very real,” Jazz radio play-by-play announcer David Locke told me. “And I think he is very genuine, and I think he is very real. I think these are legitimate qualities.”

When Mitchell made his hometown debut at Madison Square Garden last December, his parents attended, but his sister couldn’t. Mitchell often talks about the close bond he has with Jordan, five years younger than him, and he was legitimately disappointed that her first state championship had coincided with his game.

Oh, no, not because she couldn’t attend his game. It was because he didn’t have time to make the four-hour drive to catch her’s.

“He had clearly looked into before he’s about to make his debut at MSG,” Locke said, “and whether he could drive to New Hampshire to see his sister play her first state championship game.”

Mitchell’s upbringing has already become urban lore in Utah, and it’s quickly growing beyond that. He grew up in Elmsford, New York, about an hour north of Manhattan, before attending Greenwich Country Day School, a Connecticut boarding school known for its famous alumni. He spent his last two years of high school at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire, where he focused on basketball and then committed to the University of Louisville.

This all built Mitchell into the 21-year-old star he is today. His dad, Donovan Mitchell Sr., a former minor league baseball player and current New York Mets executive, provided the genes, but Mitchell’s mother, Nicole, helped mold his mindset. Once, as told to the Salt Lake Tribune’s Kyle Goon, Nicole even held back her eighth grade son from an important AAU tournament after he failed to complete a school assignment as promised. Mitchell learned school’s importance that day.

A few things have changed, like the way he handles himself in front of multiple TV cameras and several dozen reporters on Tuesday morning, his eyes meeting each subsequent speaker. At Brewster, Mitchell initially balked when it was suggested he run for senior prefect, the school’s version of class president. Back then, he was nervous. But he quickly got through that, too.

Utah immediately understood what type of person Mitchell was. Their only question was how that would translate to basketball.

“[Jazz general manager] Dennis [Lindsey] was the one who was first with him, and who first felt his depth, for lack of a better word,” head coach Quin Snyder said. “And you don’t know how that’s going to translate until he gets out competitively in NBA games. In his case, it has.”

You may have heard this coming story referenced by SB Nation’s Seerat Sohi in February. Mitchell was primarily a two-footed finisher coming out of college, and the Jazz coaching staff gave him a video showing 12 different moves — using one foot, then the other, and so on — around the basket that he should learn. They thought he would work on it all season. Instead, Mitchell showed up to training camp with several of them already in his bag. He shocked trainers at how quickly he would add one, then another, then another.

It’s even more telling how he did it. With his laptop at the gym, Mitchell watched each example and practiced them slowly. Once he felt comfortable, he sped them up. Then he added a single defender. Then he used it in a practice setting. After mastering one, it was on to the next.

“When you listen to him talk about how he went about learning how to use those finishes, it’s someone learning European history, it’s someone learning how to write a sonnet, it’s all these silly things that we had to do in school,” Locke said. “It’s clearly a kid who was raised in a classroom.”

That has been made clear to anyone around him.

“I’m not content with Donovan,” Snyder said. “I’ve learned not to be content, to appreciate what he has done but to also demand more and more of him, because that’s what he wants.”

You constantly see Mitchell’s studiousness manifest itself in everything that he does. He will make a blind pass after hearing an opposing coach yell for a double team, already knowing which teammate that second defender will have left open. And even though media interviews are nothing like correctly reading a high trap, his thoughtful answers can be attributed the same ethos.

On that same Toyota Center floor, one response from Mitchell stood out as particularly open. He and his teammates had sat in the stands for a Houston Astros’ game when free the night before. Mitchell remarked how he couldn’t remember the last time he attended a sporting event as a fan, and then mused about his last 12 months.

“I always looked up to these baseball players, that they’re in the majors,” Mitchell said. “But I’m in the major league of my sport. And that’s the kind of stuff that hits you. It’s just kind of surreal.”

Surreal, yes. But also exactly where he’s prepared himself to be.