FanPost

An Obituary to Fort Wayne Mad Ants’ Tony Mitchell’s streak of consecutive games of 22+ points

23 years old 6-6 rookie scored at least 22 points in each of the 14 games prior to St. Patrick's day, topping that with a career high 32 points in a game against Canton Charge on February 4th. His streak of consecutive 23+ points lasted just 2 games less.

It was quite impressive to see this year's Slam Dunk champion post a nice string of high scoring games during the whole month of February, but the following weeks proved that Tony was not done yet.

Jeopardy crawled in on the very first day of March while facing Springfield Armor. Fighting foul trouble for the whole evening Mitchell caught himself scoring his 6th and 7th point on free throws with only 33 seconds (!) left in 4th quarter. It seemed his series of 8 consecutive games of 23+ points was destined to end with a buzzer. But then as if some higher powers conspired to prevent it (those could have been his teammates, as well), when Mad Ants survived the regulation. Forward was given an unexpected opportunity to revive his image. During the 1st overtime Mitchell upped his point total to 11 and teams headed into a second OT. It appeared as if Tony had left the best for last, as he poured in 12 (!) points with 3 treys in 3 additional minutes, finally giving the residents of Mad Anthony’s city a reason to cheer about and himself a total of 23 points in 27 minutes of play on a stat sheet.

The second miraculous bounce back swingman provided on 10th of March against D-league leaders Bakersfield Jam. Collecting 15 points at halftime , former Alabama (Crimson Tide) Slammer once again left the locker room with a mindset of a 3pt champ (or maybe Stephen Curry?) and settled for 3 pointers and long jumpshots thus somehow evading from easy baskets. Finally converting and 1 opportunity with less than 4 minutes to play, he was given one more chance to continue his impressive statistical run. Overtime saw him scoring 5 points for another "modest" 23.

During the 14 game stretch from February 2 to March 15 Tony Mitchell averaged 25,6 ppg. Although the shooting percentage was not brilliant, about 39% from the field, heavily spoiled by taking about nine 3-pointers a game (on humble 33% accuracy), this year’s All-Star proved to be a versatile player and contributed considerably in other areas as well collecting 6,6 rebounds, 2,7 assists and about 2 steals in 36 minutes of play. Mad Ants went 8-6 during this period.

Game in Springfield on March 17 put an end to this run, and it hurt a lot because it was so close. On a bright side – Mitchell's streak of consecutive 19+ point games has now extended up to 16, and is still alive. Need I say that no other player in NBADL can currently catch up with it either.

To be honest, Mitchell did score lesser points (2) during that stretch – on February 16 @ Houston, but wait- didn't he got 95 points in Dunk contest's final round? That would make for it.



This is a FanPost, not the work of the author of Ridiculous Upside. The People speak! Questions or comments about this post should be addressed in the comments. To issue a complaint about this FanPost, please email ridiculousupside (at) gmail (dot) com.

Trending Discussions