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The Utah Jazz are in an excellent position to start the 2020-2021 NBA season with the first seed in the Western Conference. For Donovan Mitchell and company, holding the top spot in a highly competitive conference will certainly attract a huge target on their backs.
The pressure crept up on them once again when they faced the Charlotte Hornets on Friday night. In the third straight game, the Jazz allowed their opponents to trim a huge deficit down to single digits. Against the Hornets, the Utah-based squad squandered a 30-point lead down to only nine.
Mitchell has already seen a good number of less-than-stellar stretches from his team which include a handful of fouling issues for their key players, which put their comfortable leads in jeopardy.
Article Continues Below“We have to stop doing that. That has to stop. With this stretch coming up — it’s a tough stretch with opponents coming from the East — I think that’s going to be one of the biggest things,” he said via The Salt Lake Tribune. “Yeah we’re in first, but the team that we want to be ultimately, it doesn’t let the [opponent] back in to a nine-point game. We need to take a 20-point lead and get it to 25, 30.”
The Louisville alum emphasized the Jazz needing to have attention to detail and an ability to not underestimate any of their opponents, especially in the NBA where any given team can upset their counterparts once they are given the chance to do so.
“That’s got to be one of our biggest things going forward — just continuing to keep our foot on the gas. We’ve done a solid job of it; tonight was a little bit of a letdown,” Mitchell added. “We won the game and all, but we realized what we can improve on — just continuing to take it to the next level.”
Mitchell led Utah by example on Friday night when he bounced back from a scoreless opening frame en route to a 30-point output on 5/9 shooting from beyond the arc. His long bombs allowed the Jazz to break their franchise record for the second time this season with a tally of 26 made three-point shots.
Despite getting a subtle scare from LaMelo Ball's career game, the Jazz still managed to come out with a 138-121 victory. The mindset that Donovan Mitchell is implying only speaks volumes on how serious the whole squad is to finally handle their unfinished business this season.
