Charlotte • As a former second-round pick who spent as much time with the G League’s Greensboro Swarm last year as he did with the Hornets as a rookie, the success this season of now-second-year guard Devonte’ Graham (19.1 points, 7.5 assists, 40.3% 3-point shooting on 9.1 attempts per game) has caught a lot of people off-guard.
Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell, however, says he absolutely saw this coming.
As former prep teammates at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H., Mitchell said he saw enough of Graham to know he was something special.
“This doesn’t surprise me. He’s been doing this his whole [basketball-playing] career,” Mitchell said before Saturday’s game at the Spectrum Center. “… He went out and hooped at Brewster, and he did the same thing at Kansas, and he’s doing the same thing here. He’s been doing this continuously, throughout his whole life.”
A Raleigh, N.C., native, Graham originally committed to play college ball at Appalachian State when he was a little-regarded 5-foot-6 player. By the time he grew to 6-1 and had become a big deal, he looked to de-commit, but the program declined to release him. So he instead took a post-grad year at Brewster, where he and Mitchell got to know one another.
Mitchell said they had conversations back then about one day playing in the NBA together, but conceded it was more wishful thinking than viable option at the time.
“Yeah, it wasn’t really like a realistic goal, to be honest with you. More so just like, ‘I’m playing basketball, I’m going to go to college,’ but it wasn’t like, ‘We’re all gonna make it,’ ” Mitchell said. “It was just one of those things where I was like, ‘Man, Devonte’s gonna be really good.’ I always looked up to him. For us to be here, for us to be doing what we’re doing is pretty special.”
Mitchell, of course, has been doing it a bit longer, and had more instant success. He wound up advising Graham a year ago during the pre-draft process following the conclusion of the latter’s four-year career as a Jayhawk.
After being selected 34th overall by the Hawks, then winding up a Hornet, his chances to play as a rookie were sparing. He saw action in 46 games with Charlotte, and averaged just under 15 minutes per game, but the bulk of those came as Kemba Walker’s backup when the Hornets decided to give soon-retiring veteran Tony Parker a night off.
The 4.7 points, 2.6 assists, and 34.3% 3-point shooting did little to make anyone think anything like this season would be coming.
Again, though, Mitchell says he believed in the possibility.
“He’s a guy who just defies all odds,” Mitchell said. “If people don’t know him yet, they definitely will. He’s pretty special.”
Of course, Graham is hoping Mitchell can help him with that. Told pregame by a television reporter that Graham had passed along the message that Mitchell’s legion of social-media followers could be helpful in any future “Most Improved Player” campaign, the Jazz guard smiled broadly.
“I can work on that, for sure!” he said with a laugh. “I can definitely do that.”
