Donovan Mitchell: Breakthrough Player of the Year

There is no stage too bright for Donovan Mitchell. Wednesday evening Mitchell was named the Breakthrough Player of the Year by the ESPY Awards commitee, and continued his impressive run in the national spotlight. He soaked in his time on the red carpet, interviewing on ESPN sporting his incredible “Spida” suit.

This guy’s social presence is incredible. He has one of those personalities that makes all the cameras go to him during events like the ESPYs. He’s the guy that everyone wants to talk to. It’s pretty unbelievable stuff, considering that he is a player right here in Utah. After all these barriers and sterotypes that Mitchell has destroyed this season, Breakthrough Player of the Year fits him oh so perfectly.

In the 25 year history of the ESPYS, only five NBA players had won the Breakthrough Player of the Year Award. Mitchell joined LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and Jeremy Lin, which is a pretty solid group (linsanity is still undeniably cool).

He gave an incredible acceptance speach, praising his mother like he has done incessantly throughout his incredible short NBA career. He also encouraged everyone do chase their dreams, and not allow themselves to get labeled or molded by the opinions of others. Oh and I failed to mention this was after dapping up OBJ like a boss.

In case you haven’t already, thank the universe for bringing to pass a man like Donovan Mitchell. And then thank it again for allowing him to play for the Utah Jazz. I don’t know how he does it, but he becomes more likable as the days pass.

Derrick Favors opened up a little bit more on his decision to stick around in Utah in a nice little video tribute/article produced by the Utah Jazz digital team.

Derrick Favors is the man, that’s all that needs to be said at this moment in time.

NBA2K released their 2019 rating for Donovan Mitchell, and it was a little underwhealming.

Mitchell’s 87 was the exact same as the rating given for Celtics’ Jayson Tatum, which seemed to irk a lot of individuals, including the offical Utah Jazz twitter account.

87 is a solid ranking, especially for a second-year guy. But it’s understandable why some think he should be a bit higher based on Tatum’s ranking. But oh well, it’s a video game, Mitchell will just have to get buckets in real life this coming season to make up for it.

Donovan Mitchell, just like the rest of us, misses Jazz basketball. Mitchell posted a video to his Instagram story of himself watching Jazz highlights, specifically one of my favorite moments from the past season.

I miss Donovan. I miss Ricky. Can it be October already?

Some juicy NBA twitter broke overnight on Tuesday, and it shook the basketball world. Kawhi Leonard getting traded to Toronto was an outcome that was not expected by pretty much everyone, and it caught us all by surprise, including Donovan Mitchell.

This is probably how all of us looked yesterday morning while checking Twitter when first seeing the news. For Jazz fans, this offseason hasn’t had a lot of juicy trades, free-agent signings, etc. So feel free to live vicariously through these other fan bases. There’s plenty of drama to go around.