Utah Jazz: Ranking Donovan Mitchell among top shooting guards in 2021-22

Utah Jazz fans know they’ve got a top tier bucket-getter in Donovan Mitchell. While both his volume (26.4 to 24.0 points per game) and efficiency (56.9 to 54.3 True Shooting %) have both taken a dip this season, 24.0 points per game on a 54.3 True Shooting % (TS%) remains nothing to sneeze at. There’s no question that Mitchell is an elite scoring guard. The question is, how elite is he in comparison to his peers?

The rubric in this exercise is not complicated. We found the top 5 shooting guards in the NBA in points per game, ranked them according to TS%, and then took the average between those two placements to come up with a final ranking.

Readers could criticize these rudimentary criteria. After all, isn’t it advantageous to have a shooting guard with added passing ability? Shouldn’t defense be a factor? Does anybody care about rebounds per game in 2021?

All fair questions, however, the name of each of these players’ games is scoring. None of the five top scoring 2-guards have a particular reputation for either passing or defense. The two most important questions to ask about the following players are: how often do they score, and how efficiently do they do it?

We’ll add a caveat that James Harden, probably the most reputable NBA player who anyone could call a shooting guard, was excluded from these rankings. His statistical profile closely resembles that of a point guard’s this season, and he is listed as a SG/PG on Basketball Reference. In short, we consider him a point guard (particularly in Kyrie Irving’s absence).

Having established that, here’s where Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell ranks among the league’s top shooting guards in 2021-22 so far.