Through four seasons in the NBA, Miami Heat guard Davion Mitchell has been a mixed bag as a shooter. After all, for his career, he’s shot just 34.4 percent from beyond the arc and 69.8 percent from the free-throw line.
However, David Thorpe of TrueHoop thinks that Mitchell has turned a new leaf as a shooter. He got an inside look at the 27-year-old this offseason during some pickup action and said he thinks the former top-10 pick has “figured out how to shoot.”
“I saw Davion in L.A. this summer playing pickup,” he said. “Really impressed with what I saw. It was just pickup basketball, but I thought he had great command. His shot looked great. I think he’s figured out how to shoot. So, just by being a shooter and then an ace defender, he’s a net positive player for them.”
Mitchell showed that he has the potential to be a very valuable floor spacer in his small sample size with the Heat last season after the Toronto Raptors traded him. Across 30 games with Miami, he converted 44.7 percent of his 3s on 3.1 attempts per game. He carried that hot shooting over to Miami’s brief stint in the 2025 NBA Playoffs as well, as he buried his 3s at a 50.0 percent clip across four contests against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Georgia native has yet to prove that he can shoot the ball from deep with that level of efficiency and effectiveness over the course of a full 82-game campaign, but he will have a prime opportunity to do that with Miami in the coming season. Mitchell signed a new deal with the Heat in the summer and is expected to play a large role for the team once again, especially to kick off the 2025-26 season with fellow guard Tyler Herro sidelined.
Herro is set to miss some time to begin the campaign after he got ankle surgery, and the Heat might need Mitchell to step up in his absence. As an All-Star, Herro was one of the better offensive players in the league last season, and thus someone is going to have to provide a boost to keep the team above water on that end.
Assuming Mitchell is Miami’s starting point guard to open the 2025-26 season, perhaps he’ll play well enough in Herro’s absence to justify remaining in the team’s starting five after the Herro returns to the lineup. The Heat would have some tough decisions to make in that case, but it isn’t something they have to think about right now.
