Utah Jazz star shooting guard Donovan Mitchell didn't expect to have as good of a rookie season as he did.
When talking about his first NBA season and how fast he has risen in the league, he said, in an interview with Sarah Todd of the Deseret News, it was as much of a shock to him as anyone.
“To do what I did my rookie year I was in shock,” Mitchell said on Friday. “To be honest with you I had dreamt of it, but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast for me.”
In the 2017-18 season, Mitchell was the Jazz's leading scorer. He also won the dunk contest during All-Star Weekend and was runner-up for Rookie of the Year award. He was drafted with the 13th overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft.
All that hard work and the production he has put into his career thus far have paid off in a big way this week when the Jazz rewarded him with a five-year max contract extension which could be worth up to $195.6 million.
The contract, however, will not change Mitchell's approach to the game or his work ethic.
“I’m just gonna continue to do what got me here,” he said. “I’ll continue to be the same person, same player, same work ethic, and everything else will kind of just fall into place and if it doesn’t, that’s how it was meant to be.”
Whatever he does on the court, he wants it to come second after what he accomplishes off the court. That, more than anything, is what he wants to be remembered for.
“That’s the legacy I want to leave,” Mitchell said. “Championships are great, games are great, but at the end of the day I’m a Black man first. That’s the legacy. I want to be able to tell my kids, ‘Look, your dad was a part of this.’”
He will be looking to use his new lucrative contract to help in those plans in the future.
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