Days after Jamal Murray of the Denver Nuggets suffered a season-ending injury, Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz has suffered an ankle injury. Mitchell did have to be helped off the court and taken to the locker room during his team's game against the Indiana Pacers in Salt Lake City.
Utah All-Star G Donovan Mitchell is getting helped to the locker room with a lower leg injury in Salt Lake City.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) April 16, 2021
Here is the video of Donovan Mitchell being helped off the court by his teammates:
Replays were really hard to see but this is Mitchell being helped off pic.twitter.com/fYaW7iC7IN
— Aaron Bruski (@aaronbruski) April 16, 2021
Here is video of the actual injury and the sequence of events in which the injury took place:
Donovan Mitchell goes down hard with a leg injury and needs to be helped off the court by Jazz teammates.
Prayers up for Spida 🙏🏽pic.twitter.com/kl1URgIE4N
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 16, 2021
Woj says X-rays on Donovan Mitchell's ankle came back negative, but he's going to get an MRI on Friday night to determine the severity. There's reportedly some optimism that the injury isn't too serious, and the Jazz will just have to hope that's the case. Utah entered Friday's game with the best record in the NBA at 41-14.
Mitchell is in the midst of a career season. The All-Star shooting guard entered Friday averaging 26.5 points, 5.3 assists and 4.4 rebounds in 33.7 minutes per game. He's shooting 43.8% from the field and 38.5% on 3-pointers.
The NBA season — which began after a very short offseason and has tried to cram a lot of games into a relatively short time window, in order to accommodate the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo — has become notable for its many significant injuries, to prime players and role players alike.
The injury to Jamal Murray intensified conversations around the league about the broken nature of the pandemic scheduling format, in which the NBA tried to be ambitious in a way which would maximize television money and therefore not cut into player salaries. Player safety and player working conditions are a constant point of discussion, and this Donovan Mitchell injury will ensure this debate doesn't die down anytime soon.