Mitchell pointed out that Bargnani may need to dig deeper in the offseason if he is going to take his game up a level.
“That’s what these young players don’t understand. You don’t get better when the season starts, you get better in the offseason,” he said.
Mitchell said that if the Italian wants to be a deep threat, he has to be a better shooter.
“To average 17, 18 points a game in the NBA — it’s a good thing. But … Andrea needs to become a more consistent scorer, he needs to shoot a better field-goal percentage,” he said. “You know a lot of guys can score 18 points if they are shooting the ball 23 or 24 times a game, but the thing is, you want that field goal percentage up around the high 40s. And if he’s going to be a three-point shooter, he’s got to be in the high 30s or low 40s. It can’t be 28 per cent. Again, I can come back and shoot 28 per cent so Andrea’s just got to keep working and he needs to concentrate.”
Another piece of advice he offered was for Bargnani to switch his focus from a scorer’s mentality to other parts of his game.
“If I was Andrea, I would stop worrying about the scoring,” he explained. “I would worry about my defence and my rebounding and I would worry about the other parts of my game and then the other parts of the game, the parts that are strong, they will come around and you should get back to where you normally should be.”
