After helping lead Baylor to a national championship in 2021, Mitchell was drafted in the lottery, getting selected by the Kings 9th overall in the 2021 draft. He was in the regular rotation right away as a rookie, playing over 2,000 minutes of non-garbage time his rookie season. However, his minutes and overall role declined each of the next two seasons, and the Kings sort of gave up on him by trading him to the Raptors in the summer of 2024. The defensive side of the ball is Mitchell's strength. He's a good on-ball defender, moving his feet well and staying in front of ball-handlers. Mitchell does a good job of pressuring the offensive player and making him uncomfortable. He fights through screens really well. He's undersized at 6'2" but has enough strength to defend up a little bit. Mitchell isn't as disruptive as you may expect when it comes to forcing turnovers, as he has posted a low steal rate his whole NBA career. Offensively, Mitchell needs to improve his outside shooting to become a real threat on offense. He's only a 33% 3-point shooter, and teams are happy to go under screens against him and will help off him in spot-up situations. He shot 38% in '23-'24, but that might have just been small sample size noise rather than genuine improvement. Overall, Mitchell has been a pretty inefficient offensive player, posting a sub-52% true shooting for his career. He finishes well at the rim, but doesn't get there often enough, and takes too many midrange attempts. His size doesn't help him in this regard, but he'll often be out of control on drives and either turn it over or throw up a tough attempt in the lane. Mitchell will already be nearly 27 years old as a free agent in 2025, so he's on the older side compared to his 2021 draft peers, and may not really be considered a young prospect anymore. However, the team that signs him to his next contract could end up having him through his prime. There's potential for Mitchell to be a solid rotation player going forward if he can simply improve his shooting.

Mitchell will be a restricted free agent with a $19.4 million cap hold, $8 million Qualifying Offer, and full Bird Rights. If he plays 2,000 minutes or starts 41 in the regular season, his QO would riase to $8.7 million. I wouldn't expect Mitchell's QO to come into play, but I wouldn't completely rule it out considering it may actually be higher than his market value starting salary. There's also a small chance that the Raptors don't tender him a Qualifying Offer, which would make Mitchell an unrestricted free agent.  Depending on how close the Raptors are to the luxury tax after free agency, if Mitchell is brought back by the Raptors on a multi-year contract they could benefit from frontloading his contract, as it could give them additional flexibility in the future.  Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Mitchell as even teams without cap space could use any of the Non-Taxpayer MLE, Room MLE, or possibly even the Taxpayer MLE or Bi-Annual Exception to sign him to an offer sheet (although you rarely see offer sheets for less than the full MLE). However, Mitchell being a restricted free agent could greatly lower his interest among teams, as they will worry that the only way to pry him away from Toronto would be to overpay him.

Payton Pritchard (4 years, $30 million, 2023) Dante Exum (2-1 years, $6 million, 2023) Miles McBride (3 years, $13 million, 2024)