The Kings Made a Mistake Trading Davion Mitchell

His big shot will get the attention of the NBA tonight, but Mitchell's been play has skyrocketed since he joined the Heat. In 30 regular season games with Miami, he averaged 10.3 points, 5.3 assists, 2.7 rebounds, and 1.4 steals on 50.4% shooting from the field and 44.7% from three.

What stands out is the huge jump in his three-point shooting. Prior to joining the Heat, Mitchell had a career 33.2% three-point percentage. While his career number doesn't jump out at you, his career trajectory shows that Mitchell has been working towards this for years.

His three-point clip rose every season in Sacramento, going from 31.6%, to 32.0%, to 36.1% in his final season with the Kings. And over the final 22 games of the 2023-24 season, he shot 42.6% from beyond the arc.

Mitchell is one of the hardest workers in the NBA who absolutely loves basketball through-and-through. It always felt like a matter of time before his shot would get consistent, and we didn't have to wait long to see it.

While Mitchell has improved his shooting, he has also shown more of his ability to facilitate. He averaged a career-high 4.9 assists this season (4.6 with the Raptors and 5.3 with the Heat).

One of the best fits for the Kings at point guard is a player who can defend, facilitate, and hit the three. Sound familiar? It's not hard to imagine the success lineups with Mitchell and Malik Monk, or Mitchell and Zach LaVine would have with this current iteration of the Kings.

After the dust settled last season, it's safe to say that the Kings made a mistake trading Davion Mitchell. It's possible Mitchell doesn't have the chance to grow with the Kings, and it was probably best for his career to get a shot elsewhere, but it's yet another what-if in Kings history.

Adding on to the disappointment, the Kings traded Mitchell for literally nothing in return. He and Sasha Vezenkov were traded to the Raptors for Jalen McDaniels, who the Kings eventually traded away in a subsequent salary dump.

And last but not least, it's been revealed that the Kings front office knew that De'Aaron Fox didn't want to play for a coach other than Mike Brown in the offseason, while they were not keen on giving Brown the extension and keeping him. That means that before Mitchell was traded to the Raptors, the front office at least knew there was a possibility Fox would be traded.

That trade left the Kings with no point guard for the final 34 games of the season, and now the search begins for replacements during the offseason. In a span of years, Sacramento went from having Fox, Mitchell, and Tyrese Haliburton fighting for minutes, to a glaring roster hole at point guard that sits atop a long list of priorities for the offseason.