When Quin Snyder entered these NBA playoffs, with his Utah Jazz having earned the No. 1 seed while looking the part of a legitimate title contender along the way, it’s safe to assume he had no plans on quoting a fictitious coach from a popular comedy show as a way of telling the media masses that his team would be able to survive an apparent disagreement between the franchise centerpiece and the team’s medical staff.
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But there he was on Monday, with dozens of reporters inquiring about Donovan Mitchell’s reported frustration with the team’s decision to hold him out of Game 1 against Memphis with his right ankle injury, calling on none other than “Ted Lasso” to explain the need for all of them to re-focus their energies. The scene, in which one of Lasso’s English Premier League soccer players receives the following pep talk from Lasso after making a mistake, says everything about the state of the Jazz right now.
“You know what the happiest animal on earth is,” Lasso asks his apologetic player, who is named ‘Sam.’ “It’s a goldfish. You know why? Got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish, Sam.”
This, it seems, is what the fate of the Jazz’s season has come down to. And if they don’t find a way to move forward in time to avoid an upset from the eighth-seeded Grizzlies, then the memory of their demise will live in infamy for a whole lot longer than 10 seconds.
By now, many know the story. Mitchell, whose sprained ankle held him out of the final month of the regular season, practiced last week for three consecutive days. According to sources, the star shooting guard looked largely like himself. In scrimmage situations, he scored from all three levels. His first step was solid, his bounce off the floor was back. He looked ready to go, and in interview sessions proclaimed himself ready to go.
On Saturday, in advance of Sunday night’s Game 1 against the Memphis Grizzlies, Mitchell’s name wasn’t on Utah’s official injury report. On Sunday morning, Mitchell went through shootaround, received treatment, spoke to the media and talked about his prospective return.
And that’s when things grew bizarre.
An unwelcome surprise
On Sunday afternoon, teammates went to their customary afternoon naps assuming their roster would be whole, but woke up bewildered after news broke that Mitchell, who had scored 35 points in both of Utah’s wins over Memphis in the regular season, wouldn’t be available for Sunday night. A frustrated Mitchell posted thinly veiled shots — very thinly veiled to anyone who knows hip-hop — on his Instagram story.
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For most of Game 1, the Jazz played without passion or energy. They allowed Memphis to walk into Vivint Smart Home Arena and steal the series opener, 112-109. On Sunday night, Mitchell continued to post cryptic messages on Twitter and IG. Then came Monday morning, when an ESPN report about Mitchell’s frustrations only added to the intrigue.
Heading into Wednesday night’s Game 2, what went on behind the scenes has come more into focus. Even if there is ambiguity elsewhere. Mitchell, as some stars around the league are known to do, has his own team of trainers who work in conjunction with the Jazz medical staff. According to sources, Mitchell’s team cleared him to play and gave him the go-ahead. Utah’s staff wanted him to sit out another game.
The disconnect, quite clearly, did not sit well with Mitchell.
“It’s no secret,” Mitchell said when asked about relying on his own experts in addition to the team’s medical staff. “Guys have used their own people, for sure. We’re working in conjunction with the team. It’s not like a picking-sides type deal. I think that was one of the best things about (his recovery from the ankle injury). We started progressing forward, and (it was a) collaborative effort. At the end of the day, it’s the team’s decision to — whether I’m clear or not, you know? And I feel like that’s the message. That’s it. We chose — they chose — to say (he) wasn’t cleared.”
When it comes to how this went down, though, that distinction at the end of Mitchell’s comment is vital. Not only had Mitchell’s team indicated internally that he was healthy enough to play, but sources say he had been expecting to make his return from the ankle injury late in the regular season and was already frustrated with the unexpected delay. But the Jazz, who have the final say in whether a player is ready to play, didn’t agree that he should play and made the determination for a number of reasons.
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According to a source with knowledge of the organization’s thinking, the top priority was Mitchell’s health and safety. The ankle sprain that Mitchell suffered in a game against Indiana on April 16 was clearly serious, and the notion of bringing him back when he was anything less than 100 percent caused concern on two fronts.
For one, his age (24) means there is a long-view perspective when it comes to his career that is always taken into account. Secondly, there was concern about the injury lingering throughout the postseason in the kind of way that might keep him from being at his best when it mattered most in the later rounds, which the Jazz are more hopeful than ever to reach this year. With Game 1 on Sunday and Game 2 not until three days later, there was recovery time to be gained by waiting.
To that point, consider the contrasting case of LeBron James. The Lakers star came back late in the regular season after missing nearly six weeks with a high ankle sprain, and is clearly continuing to battle the injury. Sure, he was able to pull off a heroic win against the Warriors with his clutch 3 in the Play-In game, but he also looked labored at times in Game 1 against Phoenix. LeBron and the Lakers still face the same 1-0 series hole that the Jazz are in despite playing at less than full strength.
No two injury situations are the same, of course, but the James situation underscores the reality that these dynamics are never easy for the player or the team. Especially once you factor in the added element of outside training staff.
Players like James, Chris Paul, Mitchell and others have taken to hiring their own trainers or other staff to coordinate everything from their routines to rehab. James, in fact, has had his personal trainer, Mike Mancias, with him as a staff member for his Cleveland, Miami and Lakers teams. But the logistics can sometimes be difficult to navigate, with the number of voices in the room, so to speak, often well past double digits. It’s a far cry from how it used to be in the NBA, when a team might have had one trainer, one physical therapist and one strength and conditioning coach who made these kinds of decisions.
There’s also an irony of sorts in Mitchell’s position here. More often than not, it’s an organization’s decision to rush a player back into the action — rather than hold him out because of an abundance of caution — that inspires criticism.
That was the case in the 2019 Finals, when Kevin Durant’s Achilles tendon tear in Game 5 against Toronto raised questions about whether Golden State should have let him return from the calf strain that he suffered late in the Western Conference semifinals. To the Warriors’ defense, Durant has claimed all along that he doesn’t question the team’s decision.
On Jazz history, health and harmony
When Mitchell discussed the situation so openly with reporters on Monday, there was no mention of the last time there was so much public focus on his frustration. He didn’t bring up the NBA shutdown back on March 11, 2020 that was caused by Rudy Gobert’s positive COVID-19 test and sparked so much friction between the Jazz big man and Mitchell, or the “Good Morning America” appearance five days later in which he acknowledged those tensions.
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Nor did he mention the three-plus months that followed, with all that uncertainty and uncomfortableness looming over the organization until Mitchell finally discussed the matter at length with reporters in early July as the Jazz prepared to re-start their season in the Orlando bubble. But Mitchell didn’t have to go down that (unpleasant) memory lane for everyone to know it was there.
It’s difficult to look at this situation through any other lens. And this time around — with Mitchell and Gobert having long since made amends and the Jazz surviving all this drama en route to earning the No. 1 seed this season — it’s quite clear that Mitchell chose to take a different tack because of what’s at stake.
As he so eloquently put it, “we lost Game 1 and we’ve got shit to handle.” So he sent that cryptic note on social media, one that made it clear that his absence was outside of his control. And as Mitchell shared, he also addressed his teammates in a very direct fashion after the report of his frustration.
“This is the playoffs,” he said. “We’re focused on one goal, you know what I mean? This is not the time for all that. I think the biggest thing, for us, is we’re going to go out there and try to win a championship. “I was like, ‘Look, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page. That doesn’t change.’ Because at the end of the day, we have phones, we have Twitter, we have Instagram, and this has been everywhere.
“So it’s one thing to kind of let it linger. Or you can just kind of go ahead and kill it from the jump. And that’s what I wanted to accomplish with my team meeting, and it wasn’t even really a meeting. It was really like a few sentences and that was it. But I wanted to accomplish that. But it’s playoff time, and all the other stuff is whatever.”
Still, it’s an unforced turnover if ever there was one.
The Jazz had worked so hard to be harmonious again. Mitchell and Gobert fixed what was broken between them, then joined forces in the bubble to play a brand of basketball that — while not good enough to beat Denver in their seven-game first-round series defeat — made you believe they were all on the same page again. Despite the internal obstacles, it seemed, this group clearly wasn’t “unsalvageable” after all.
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The night the Jazz fell in Game 7 against the Nuggets, when Mitchell was just 9 of 22 from the field with nine turnovers and Mike Conley’s 3-pointer at the buzzer that would’ve won it rimmed out, the pain the loss had caused was palpable. Snyder, who stood there looking so stunned in the hallway of the Disney World arena long after conducting his media duties, still couldn’t believe Conley’s shot hadn’t gone down.
Mitchell, who averaged 36.3 points, five rebounds and 4.9 assists in the series, spent approximately 20 minutes engaged in an emotional heart-to-heart with former Jazz assistant Johnnie Bryant (who’s now with the Knicks) near the team’s locker room. They had lost the series, of course, but they hadn’t lost their way.
With all of that in mind, it should surprise no one that Mitchell was fuming when he had his 2021 playoff debut taken away from him just hours before tipoff. For Snyder’s part, he’s hopeful his team can find a way to use friction as a way to grow stronger. Again.
“Whatever adversity a team goes through – in this case, if you want to characterize it as that – I think one of the things our players, Donovan especially, has been able to do throughout the course of the year is to use that…for galvanizing, for focus, and that’s where our focus is,” Snyder said. “I’m thinking about coaching the team, and those things are happening throughout the organization and, again, with the overarching philosophy that we want to do the best thing for the player. And however those things come to – the results come to pass – those are details, I think, that are not things that I’m involved or privy to in many instances. My focus is the team. …You move forward, and that’s where we are right now.”
What’s next?
Mitchell is cleared and available for Wednesday night and Game 2, a game that now amounts to a must-win for the Jazz. And the question is where do the Jazz go from here?
If Utah comes out, plays well, wins Game 2, and goes on to win the series, then this moment might be forgotten rather easily, even if the Game 1 decision was a big moment. But the longer the Grizzlies are able to stay in the series, the bigger this moment gets for the Jazz. And what the Jazz rightfully want is for this to be a blip and not a talking point.
This is a huge postseason for Utah. After a long wait, the Jazz have crossed the regular-season threshold from being a good team to being a great team. They have gone 52-20 in the regular season, garnered the top seed in the postseason for the first time in generations when the previous high seed for a Snyder-led team has been No. 5. They have three All-Stars, a Sixth Man Award winner, a Coach of the Year candidate, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate and two All-NBA candidates. They have hopes, and are open about those hopes, of winning an NBA title. They are in a Western Conference that’s as open to any team coming out of it as a Western Conference can be.
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What isn’t talked about is that the Jazz have some decisions to make this offseason. Conley will be an unrestricted free agent, and he’s played so well this season that the Jazz surely want to bring him back. He clearly has a lot left in the tank. The Jazz have a roster that’s in the luxury tax, a new owner in Ryan Smith and a roster that will be costly to bring back as a repeat tax team in a small market.
In a word, it’s much easier to sell a repeat tax roster for a team that made a deep playoff run and has shown capability in a playoff setting of winning a title, than for a team that bowed out yet again in the first or second round. In essence, this postseason for the Jazz, successful or not, has the potential to have some implications down the road. And simply put, in a postseason this important, this is a distraction the Jazz don’t need.
These playoffs, which began with so much hope, have gotten off to a bad start.
“I thought we competed,” Snyder said on Sunday night. “I didn’t think we executed on the level that we needed to in this moment in the playoffs.”
This is a situation that could likely have been avoided with more communication. And it’s clear that each party has valid points. Mitchell felt good enough to go. A team of medical professionals agreed with him. He was taken off the injury report. He went through a week of practice and workouts. This is the playoffs, and he’s had an extended period of time to get right. One of his shining traits is his competitive fire. But if he’s frustrated, he’s not going to hide it.
From an organizational standpoint, the last thing they want to do is put their young star in harm’s way. Mitchell made a significant leap this season, has played at an All-NBA level and is fast becoming one of the best offensive players in basketball. He’s super-skilled, no question about that. But what sets him apart, especially at his 6-foot-1 size, is his elite athleticism. The Jazz don’t want to bring him back at less than 100 percent.
“I was ready to go, and the staff didn’t think I was ready,” Mitchell said. “The biggest thing was I felt like I should have played. At the end of the day, the experts said no. That was the frustration. I felt like I wasn’t there for my team.”
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For the Utah Jazz, the way to move forward is by winning. It’s clear Memphis isn’t going to lay down for Utah and become eighth-seed fodder for the top seed, even if it originally appeared the Jazz caught a break by drawing the Grizzlies instead of the Golden State Warriors or Los Angeles Lakers. Memphis is young, hungry, brash, athletic, brazen and clearly unafraid of Utah. The Jazz aren’t going to be handed this series. If they are going to advance to the second round, they will have to play well in order to do it.
And they need Mitchell and everyone on the same page. As the Jazz found out on Sunday night, it’s more difficult to create a shot in a postseason setting, and Mitchell creates his shot almost as well as anyone in the league. Most importantly, the Jazz need to be whole again. They haven’t been for almost seven weeks. It’s a long time to go without at least one major rotation piece, and the Jazz have had to do it.
On Wednesday night, Mitchell will make the Utah Jazz whole on the court again. But for them to accomplish the goal for this season, they need to be whole off the floor as well.
(Photo: Melissa Majchrzak / NBAE via Getty Images)