Overview:
Mitchell has bypassed the G League so far while averaging 5.4 points on 51.8% shooting and 2.0 assists in 13 NBA games
The education of Ajay Mitchell continues, nearly five months after professional basketball lured him off UC Santa Barbara’s campus a year short of graduation.
A third-grader at Scissortail Elementary School in Edmond, Oklahoma, gave him a tutorial last week on The Bad Guys, a series of children’s books about a band of cartoon animals who try to reform their criminal image with good deeds.
“They want to be a hero?” Mitchell asked the boy.
The kid nodded at his newest hero, the emerging NBA rookie point guard of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“I’ve never read any of these, so I may have to take one home,” Mitchell told the beaming youngster.
The former Gaucho was beaming, too. He’d earned a seat on the bus … which on this day was the team’s “Rolling Thunder Book Bus.”
Nothing could better signal his arrival as a bona-fide NBA player than getting included in the team’s favorite community outreach program with the trip to Scissortail School.
Mitchell represented the team again last week by calling out bingo numbers to the senior citizens at the Legend Independent Living Center in Oklahoma City.
Nadine Lewis canceled a conflicting appointment to join the fun in the same theater room at the center where she watches Thunder games on television.
“Everybody was excited about them coming, and we were just wondering who it would be,” she said.
Nadine, meet Ajay.
“I always want to do stuff like that,” Mitchell said afterward. “I mean, this community shows a lot of support, so it’s important for us to give back any way we can.”
One-Way Ticket
Mitchell’s benevolence doesn’t surprise those who know him. Those who don’t know him are surprised how quickly he’s earned a seat on the team bus of one of the NBA’s powers.
The Thunder selected Mitchell in the second round of last June’s NBA Draft with the No. 38 pick. It signed him to a two-way contract after training camp a month later.
Two-way players are usually tasked with proving themselves in the G League, the NBA’s developmental circuit.
It was the path that Gabe Vincent took from UCSB six years ago to what is now a three-year, $33 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers.
The G League is where former Gaucho forward Miles Norris now toils with the Memphis Hustle.
Josh Pierre-Louis, Mitchell’s Gaucho teammate the last three years, is taking his own shot with the league’s Salt Lake City Stars.
The NBA farm system was also Mitchell’s projected destination. Oklahoma City, which leads the NBA’s Western Conference so far with an 11-2 record, was already well stocked with star guards coming into this season.
But Mitchell has been a G League DNP so far. He has instead played in all 13 of the Thunder’s NBA games at an average rate of 15.8 minutes per night.
He is only the 12th Gaucho in history to play in the NBA, although half of those have been within the last decade — the most of any Big West Conference school.
A two-way contract limits a player to just 50 NBA games throughout the 82-game regular season and also excludes him from the playoffs.
But all expectations now are that Oklahoma City will eventually convert his contract to a standard one and keep him for the duration.
“He’s gotten better very quickly,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “Usually when people show that type of quick improvement, it shows they have a trajectory that is worth exploring.”
Confidence Man
Their show of trust has not been lost on Mitchell.
“It’s been unbelievable,” he said. “I know I can go out there and just play and be myself … It really helps.
“No matter what happens, even if I make a mistake, I know that they still believe in me, and that I’ve just got to focus on the next play.”
Mitchell has averaged 5.4 points per game for the Thunder while shooting 51.8% overall and 46.2% from the three-point line.
He’s also contributed 26 assists with just 10 turnovers in his 13 appearances.
Mitchell actually had Oklahoma City at hello. Thunder general manager Sam Presti liked what he saw while following Mitchell’s progress at UCSB.
He personally scouted him in games last season against UC San Diego and Hawai‘i.
“For each draft we always talk about the fact that we draft people before we draft players,” he said.
Mitchell’s performances at the NBA Draft Combine and in the predraft workouts clinched it for Presti.
He traded Lindy Waters III and cash to the Golden State Warriors in a multiteam deal that moved the Thunder up enough in the second round to get his Gaucho.
Mitchell validated his worth in the NBA Summer League. He averaged 16.4 points on 53% shooting — 40% in his three-pointers — as well as 4.6 assists.
Daniel Dixon, the Thunder’s summer league coach, was especially impressed with his spatial awareness and change of pace.
“He always does a good job of touching the paint,” he said. “He’s able to see different things and make different reads while being aggressive.
“He creates for others a lot.”
Daigneault began visualizing Mitchell as a secondary table-setter to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the team’s All-Star point guard, while watching him play at the team’s training camp.
It’s a role that Vasilije Micić played for the team last year before he was traded to the Charlotte Hornets.
“Ajay has a similar skill set,” Daigneault said. “Ajay is a point guard. He runs the game. He understands where everybody should be.
“That’s helpful. That helps you get organized.”
Mother’s Day
Mitchell’s standing with the team had solidified enough by the start of the NBA preseason that his mother, Fabienne Wagemans, flew to San Antonio from Belgium for the Thunder’s exhibition opener.
“She didn’t want to miss my first game,” Mitchell said during the pregame warmups. “It’s going to be fun for her to see me play, and I’m really excited for that.”
Daigneault was excited, too, after he scored 19 points on 8-for-13 shooting in a 23-minute stint off the bench.
Reporters began asking how a newbie from the midmajor world could become so impactful so soon for one of the world’s best basketball teams.
“We play a lot of 5-on-5 at training camp, so there is a lot underneath the surface that you guys might not see, but we do,” Daigneault replied. “We take those minutes really seriously.
“He showed a capacity early on both ends of the floor.
“As good as he was offensively tonight, he was really good defensively.”
Mitchell’s approach to the team’s workouts was to “just be a sponge.” He made a point of sidling up next to Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams during film sessions.
“It’s just crazy how they dissect the game, and how they read it,” he said. “For me it’s just learning from them. Learning how they read defenses but also how they attack really helps me.”
Williams, who played his college basketball at Santa Clara University, saw a bit of himself in the Thunder rookie.
“Something with the midmajor guys,” he said sheepishly. “Just, you know, pretty good basketball players.”
Spurred On
Mitchell’s breakthrough performance in the regular season came in game four — again against the San Antonio Spurs — when he scored 12 points on 5-for-6 shooting.
He converted both a three-point play and his lone three-point attempt of the game.
“Ajay has just been so steady, man,” fellow guard Alex Caruso said afterward. “Obviously he’s got a real smooth game … Lefty.”
His maturity, he added, is especially uncommon for a 22-year-old rookie.
“He’s built a pretty quiet demeanor and he doesn’t show too much emotion, but he’s tough,” Caruso said. “His focus is good and he’s obviously playing smart basketball.
“Not making crazy decisions. Taking opportunities to be aggressive on the floor when they’re there, and just not being a liability for anything on the court.
“That’s how you get minutes in the NBA.”
There is still that kid inside the former Gaucho who relished the video games he used to play with his UCSB teammates.
“The first few games (with the Thunder), I was talking to some teammates that this was like NBA 2K,” he said, referring to the game that simulates the game-day experiences of NBA players.
“I’m kind of getting used to it a little bit more. but in the first few games I was in awe. I was like, ‘I’m in like 2K right now!’”
So far, the game has brought him front and center before third-graders in pursuit of children’s books and senior citizens searching for a full bingo card.
And then there are also those 18,203 screaming fans who hover over him every game night at Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center.
He relishes every minute with them all.
“The NBA was like a dream since I was a little kid,” Mitchell said. “Getting to that point, for me, was all great, no matter what the contract situation was, or where I got picked.
“I didn’t really care about that.
“Coming in, I wanted to make the best out of it and just enjoy the moment.”
And those moments are getting bigger with every game.
