How Thunder’s Ajay Mitchell Evolved From Overlooked Prospect to Budding NBA Star

OKLAHOMA CITY – Ajay Mitchell wants to talk about his job. Not that job, though he’ll get to his role with the Thunder, one that has expanded significantly in recent weeks after a rash of injuries gutted the team’s rotation. His other job: general manager of the UC-Santa Barbara basketball program, a gig he accepted last August. Over the summer Mitchell hit up Joe Pasternack, the Gaucho’s head coach, and Kelly Barsky, the athletic director. Mitchell, who played three seasons at UCSB, wanted to help the program. They offered the GM job. Mitchell accepted.

“I know the areas where we can improve,” Mitchell said. “And that's just my goal is to help this program grow and be the best it can be.”

It's mid-October and Mitchell is speaking from an empty room inside the Thunder practice facility. At Santa Barbara, Mitchell was a good player: All-American, three-time All-Big West selection, 2022-23 Big West Player of the Year, accolades that caught the attention of Oklahoma City, which swung a deal to acquire his second round draft rights in 2024. In OKC, Mitchell has emerged as a very good player. He averaged 13.6 points last season, more than double his output from his rookie year. The start to this season has been even better. With Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace down, Mitchell is averaging career-highs in scoring (17.8 points), rebounding (4.0) and field goal percentage (50%) in a tidy 27.8 minutes per game. This week, he scored 43 points in back-to-back wins over Cleveland. There’s already early buzz for All-Star consideration.

For the Thunder, Mitchell’s versatility has been invaluable. “Guys are out, and we need more scoring? He'll do so,” said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. “If you need more defending, he'll do so.” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault praised Mitchell’s ability to play off whoever he is on the floor with. “That's a unique skill, especially for a young player that should be finding his way,” said Daigneault. “But he seems to have a pretty good sense of who he is and what he can do out there.”

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When a player like Mitchell emerges, you wonder: What did teams miss? “Good question,” Mitchell says. Was it his size? At 6' 4" Mitchell isn’t overwhelming physically for a combo guard. His defense? At UCSB, Mitchell believes his offense overshadowed his defensive potential. “I don't think you could really see how good of a defender I could become,” says Mitchell. Was it the belief that a mid-major, inside-the-arc scorer wouldn’t cut it at the NBA level? “Maybe,” says Mitchell, smiling. “You would have to ask them.”

Daigneault can rattle off a few of his theories. “He's Belgian. He was kind of a late bloomer physically,” said Daigneault. “He's at UCSB. He kind of stayed at that level the whole time. He was a little older. I don't know.” He credits Thunder GM Sam Presti for seeing through it. “Sam was on it,” Daigneault said. He recalled a conversation with Presti late in the 2023-24 season. “I had not seen him in a while,” says Daigneault. “And I was like, ‘Where you been?’ And he told me where his trip was and he's like, ‘I think there's a guy for us at Santa Barbara.’ He's like, ‘This guy, he's just got some different stuff.’”

Daigneault doesn’t have an aha! moment with Mitchell. But he has an anecdote. In the summer of 2024, Oklahoma City armed up. They added Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso, role players who complemented the Thunder’s rapidly developing core. “Monster team,” said Daigneault. That September, Daigneault sat in on a scrimmage. On several possessions, he watched Hartenstein make a catch at the top of the circle and look for Mitchell for a dribble hand-off. Hartenstein, who had run that same play with Chris Paul and Jalen Brunson, was looking for Mitchell.

“That was the first sign that I was like, O.K., if they think he's really good in this kind of unstructured setting, then they're probably right,” said Daigneault. “The way that they were playing, you can tell when the players think they see a player. They're usually right.”

Daigneault likens Mitchell’s development to Williams, who didn’t start early in his rookie season “and we just kind of threw him in the mix and all of a sudden he's very effective when he's just in the mix,” Daigneault said. Mitchell played 36 games as a rookie and sparingly, and largely ineffectively, during Oklahoma City’s championship run. Next season, different story. He seized the opportunity presented by Williams’s early season hamstring injury. Same thing in the playoffs. Daigneault cites the second-round series against the Lakers, where Mitchell was counted on to score on one end and defend Austin Reaves on the other.

Mitchell, successfully Thunder-ized, is quick to share credit for his development. He notes the opportunities created by injuries. “Getting to play more sure helped,” he says. He points to his teammates for pushing to get him involved. “They put me in positions to be able to showcase myself,” says Mitchell. “The coaching staff has done the same thing.” Last summer, Mitchell focused on his body. Mitchell dealt with a smorgasbord of injuries last season—abdominal strain, ankle sprain and a calf strain, the latter which cost him the final four games of the conference finals. Mitchell’s goal this season: To play all 82 games.

Success, he believes, will help with that other job. Mitchell is grateful to UCSB. Growing up in Belgium, Mitchell dreamed of playing college basketball. His father, Barry, played at Norfolk State, later finding success in the CBA. His two sisters, Alexis and Ashley, played college volleyball. Santa Barbara was the first school to recruit him. “It was pretty special,” says Mitchell. He was 16 then, playing for the national team. “The first day I got there,” says Mitchell, “it just felt like I was part of a new family.”

Now he is looking to give back. There are no day-to-day duties, Mitchell says. He checks in with players and assistant coaches. He keeps an open line to Pasternack. Among his priorities are to upgrade the facilities. “As of right now, there's not one thing that we have to improve, there's a lot of things,” says Mitchell. “So it's up to the program, to me to just identify those areas and make sure we got everything we need for those players and for the program.”

Eventually, Mitchell hopes Santa Barbara can be a destination for blue-chip talent. The player development program is proven, Mitchell says, citing ex-NBAers Gabe Vincent, Alan Williams and Brian Shaw as proof, along with himself. And Santa Barbara? Yeesh. The university looks like it was ripped from an oil painting, with a campus that sits on the Pacific coastline. Mitchell’s recruitment was done over Zoom. He did his research before visiting. On the coaches, the players, the academics. His first trip sealed it. Pulling up to the beach, Mitchell said to himself, I’m really glad I made this decision.”

Santa Barbara certainly would agree.

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