THE ORLANDO BUBBLE feels like ancient history to Donovan Mitchell. Since his captivating scoring duel with Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray last August, Mitchell signed a maximum rookie extension for $163 million (and jumped into a pool fully clothed to celebrate), lost his grandmother to a stroke and huddled with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss social justice issues. But as he charged toward the postseason with the mission to prove Bubble Ball was no fluke, Mitchell suffered an ankle injury on April 16 that sidelined him for the remainder of the regular season and left him in an all-too-familiar limbo.
During his recovery, as he wrestled with the inevitable frustration and uncertainty, Mitchell found himself harkening back to the disciplines he developed during the pandemic, which were to dissect and correct his weaknesses through the rigors of film study.
"Bubble mentality," Mitchell says. "It worked."
Yet his grand return hit a snag in the hours leading up to Game 1 of the Utah Jazz's opening-round playoff series with the Memphis Grizzlies. Mitchell's name had been removed from the injury list prior to tipoff, but a precautionary, last-minute decision by the Jazz medical staff kept him from playing. Sources confirmed the move was at odds with Mitchell's personal training staff, leaving the young guard fuming on the sidelines.
"I feel like I let [my team] down in a sense, when you're not there to play in a playoff game," Mitchell said on May 24. "And that probably hurts me more than anything else. It eats me. I barely slept because I think about that stuff."
Three days later, the star guard was back in the lineup for Game 2, scoring 25 points in 25 minutes and leading his team to a 141-129 victory. The mere presence of Mitchell on the floor instantly solved Utah's spacing and shooting issues, whether he was driving and kicking, driving and finishing, or pulling up and knocking down treys.
After the game, Mitchell declared the flap from Game 1 behind him. Sources say some deft behind-the-scenes maneuvering by newly minted minority owner -- and Mitchell confidant -- Dwyane Wade played a role in mitigating the tension. It was just the latest instance in which the surefire Hall of Famer has helped guide the Jazz's rising superstar.
And while it's premature to discern whether the incident may have lingering effects, all parties agreed the most paramount topic was advancing to the next round in the West.
"In my four years, we've only won one playoff series," Mitchell says. "I tell people it runs through my head on a daily basis. We need to prove ourselves -- I need to prove myself -- in the playoffs."
IN MITCHELL'S BUBBLE scoring party last summer, his singular results -- including a staggering 57-point barrage in Game 1 of the first-round series -- were so spectacular, some people forget the Jazz actually blew a 3-1 series lead to the Nuggets.
"The way we played, everyone felt like we won," Mitchell says. "But that loss was a catalyst to where we are now."
Jazz coach Quin Snyder knew following that gut-wrenching series loss to Denver that his team needed to tweak its approach. Although the Jazz had already relied on 3-point shooting and crisp ball movement, Snyder urged his players to hunt for open shots earlier in the shot clock, and to never pass them up, even if it was a pull-up 3-pointer. The quicker pace and freedom to launch paid dividends, as the Jazz averaged 16.7 3s a night -- a league record -- and posted the NBA's third-ranked offense en route to their league-best 52-20 record. Mitchell thrived as Utah's emerging star, but as the postseason approached, and he sat on the bench rehabbing his injured ankle, he turned to a familiar mentor. "I called D-Wade," Mitchell says, "to see what he sees.'"
Wade, a decorated NBA veteran, had experienced a gamut of emotions, from championship euphoria to toiling for a lottery team. He stressed to Mitchell the most valuable asset in the NBA was consistency. "My two previous playoff series were shaky," Mitchell says he told Wade. "It was like, 'Man, how do I figure this out?'"
Wade advised him to dial back his urgency, to slow down his thought process, to simplify the game. "You are trying to attack from so many different angles, but you can attack it from one angle if you are patient," Wade explained to his protégé. "When you try to do all these different things at once, it's not going to happen. Don't force it. Let the game come to you." Mitchell was in a hurry. He was just 21 years old when he won the Slam Dunk contest and 22 when he made his first All-Star Game. But then there was 2020, when a host of injuries fostered lineup changes and uneven play.
"Everything felt so up and down last season," Mitchell says. "When I was put in quarantine, and the games were stopped, that was an extended break for me to reflect on how I could be better."
Unlike other stars who installed home gyms and state-of-the-art equipment, and relied on seasoned personal trainers to guide them through the stoppage, Mitchell kept pace by jogging, lifting weights and watching hours of film, with lessons of a Lakers legend ringing in his ears.
"Kobe [Bryant] was talking about how everybody watches film," Mitchell says, "but they watch it to see the highlights, all the good they've done, and they don't really want to watch the bad games.
"I spent my entire quarantine watching two, three games a day of my bad games from a year ago against the guys that gave me trouble. Why am I struggling against them? Am I struggling going right? Is it the two-dribble pull-up? Why am I struggling at the rim? I was studying those so when we got the ball rolling, I knew exactly which points to attack."
He says he relived those cinematic lowlights again during the 40 days he was out, rehabbing his ankle. There was one particular clip that he kept playing on loop: Jan. 30, 2019, the day he found out he had been named an All-Star for the first time.
The Jazz had been playing in Denver, and Mitchell finished with 4 points and 4 turnovers. "I think I shot 1-of-18," he says. (He actually shot 1-of-12.)
"It was a big game and nothing was going in," he says. "I remember it vividly. I didn't take my nap that day, because I had so much angst about whether I was going to make my first All-Star game. My mind was not where it needed to be."
In re-watching that game, Mitchell says he was oblivious to the events unfolding on the floor.
"There are certain instances when you watch the film and you say, 'Damn, I didn't see this in real time,'" he says. "'Why am I getting cut off here? Because they're blitzing me. I should have known that by the third quarter.' Those are things I started to pick up on."
As this year's postseason approached, he re-watched his Bubble games to glean how he could replicate some of that success. While the 57-point explosion garnered all the attention, Mitchell says his Game 2 performance, in which he submitted 30 points and 8 assists to help Utah tie the series, was more rewarding.
"If you have 57 and win, that's one thing," Mitchell says, "but I had all those points, played big minutes, and we lost. I was exhausted. I said to myself, 'I can't do this every game.'
"I was more methodical in Game 2, more patient, like D-Wade said. Instead of thinking, 'Attack, attack,' it was, 'Let me make an impact on the game in other ways besides scoring.'"
WADE WAS ONE of many NBA luminaries who texted Mitchell throughout his offensive display in Orlando. It was Wade who, following Mitchell's rookie season, invited him to San Clemente, California, to attend his camp for young NBA upstarts. Mitchell eagerly accepted, joining CJ McCollum, Justise Winslow, Delon Wright and Jahlil Okafor. "Jimmy Butler was invited too," Mitchell says, "but he was hurt, so he came and just sat around talking trash."
Wade's curriculum included on-court basketball drills and sessions on nutrition, proper weight training, business strategies and media navigation. Mitchell was awestruck. "I knew D-Wade was an amazing player, but it was pretty dope to watch how he goes about things," Mitchell says. "I left there thinking, 'That's what I want to do.'"
On the final day of camp, Mitchell and Wade embraced, and the future Hall of Famer told him, "Hit me whenever."
"Usually when someone says that you might do it once," Mitchell says. "But my feeling was, if D-Wade is saying this to me, I'm taking advantage. I call him all the time.
"We had one conversation that was two or three hours long. I hit him with a thousand questions. The one thing I really appreciate about D-Wade was he was as engaged as I was during that conversation. Now that I'm four years in, I understand your most valuable thing is your time -- and he gave me the time of day."
Mitchell's affinity for Wade can be traced to his days as a teenager attending Greenwich Country Day school. He loved how Wade used his strength and explosiveness to score, and so he began to model his game after his. But the admiration blossomed during the 2016 ESPYs when Wade, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul took the stage to decry violence against people of color, and to push for change. "The racial profiling has to stop," Wade said that night. "The shoot-to-kill mentality has to stop. Not seeing the value of black and brown bodies has to stop. But also, the retaliation has to stop."
Mitchell was 20 years old at the time, a budding college star at Louisville. The image of those NBA stars standing together still resonates with him. "It felt ... different," Mitchell says. "Like a turning point. It was a message that we're not putting up with the bulls---. For so many years we've witnessed the injustice, then after a few months it goes away and the news cycle moves on.
"The fact that we're still talking about George Floyd makes me proud of what we did in the Bubble, because we're keeping attention where it needs to be. We've got to keep it going, otherwise there's no change."
Mitchell was one of five players named to the NBA Social Justice Coalition in late 2020, which called on federal lawmakers to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill that would prohibit racial profiling, chokeholds and no-knock warrants. He draws from personal experience, he says, when he tries to effect change.
"I grew up in White Plains [New York]," he says. "I speak on things I see. I played ball with predominantly Black kids, and then I wound up at schools [Greenwich Country Day and the Canterbury School] where everyone was white. I would see certain things that they were totally unaware of. They didn't know what was going on 20 minutes up the road.
"Education is the biggest piece. If you don't know about Asian history, about Black history, about LGBTQ history and you refuse to learn, that's on you. If you listen and understand, then maybe your stance will change."
Mitchell says it's not difficult to meld social justice and basketball excellence. "I try to use both for change," he says. He recently served as the virtual commencement speaker at the University of Utah, where he told graduates, "You have the opportunity to make so much possible."
It is precisely the same sentiment that Wade expressed to Mitchell. When the Jazz lost Game 1 to the Grizzlies, it was Wade who counseled him to prepare for the long haul and not overreact to a single game.
Mitchell, who scored 30 points in 35 minutes of a Game 4 win that has put Memphis on the brink of elimination, says he's hellbent on proving the Jazz are worthy of the No. 1 overall seed, and to relieve some of the growing skepticism over whether his team possesses championship DNA.
"External noise doesn't really impact us, but it's naive to say there's no pressure," Mitchell says. "I'm ready for it."