Utah Jazz rookie Donovan Mitchell can dunk. We know as much because he won the 2018 Slam Dunk Contest in February.
But dunking in a dunk competition is much different than throwing down a jaw-dropping dunk in a game. Mitchell is no stranger to this either. In the fourth quarter of Utah's Game 2 victory in Houston last night, the 21-year old star delivered a thunderous put-back slam off his own miss that will serve as an exclamation point as the series now shifts to Salt Lake City for Games 3 & 4.
The dunk:
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After the game, Mitchell was of course asked about the explosive put-back.
“To be honest with you, I was just trying to shoot a floater and grab a rebound, but I just happened to be up there,” Mitchell said, according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “So I figured, why not come down with it?”
Joe Ingles, who had a career night in Game 2, had a different take on Mitchell's slam.
“His mid-air decision should have been to get back on transition defense,” said forward Joe Ingles, who led the team with a career-high 27 points. “Guarantee you that’s in the film session tomorrow… I don’t know what his mid-air decision was because I’ve never been in that situation. And I never will be. But yeah, just get back in transition defense. That’s all he needs to know.”
Game 3 between the Jazz and Rockets is scheduled to tipoff tomorrow night at 10:30pm ET, airing on ESPN.
