On Tuesday, the Utah Jazz lost Game 7 to the Denver Nuggets, abruptly bringing an end to their season. It’s been a roller coaster season for the franchise, which made some great offseason moves that had some experts predicting they could win the title. Then. the NBA stoppage started when Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell tested positive for COVID-19.
After the restart, they played an incredible series against the Nuggets where Donovan Mitchell and Jamal Murray caught a fire so hot, it has never been done before.
On the Locked On Jazz Podcast, host David Locke tried to find the positives in Utah’s season, one of them being the emergence of Mitchell. Locke even went so far as to say that he's a star unlike any the Utah Jazz franchise had ever seen, including John Stockton and Karl Malone.
David Locke: The singular most important thing that took place is that Donovan became a star. He's just that special. And the Jazz will offer 100 million dollars in the offseason on an extension, I assume he’s going to take it.
Donovan became really a special special player in his third year in the NBA. This is the next step. He’s a star.
We haven't had a star like this since Stockton & Malone, and I'm not sure we've actually had a star like this. It's illegal to not include Stockton & Malone, but, but we actually haven't had this kind of star. He could score 30 a game next year with no difficulty. He's really great…
Donovan Mitchell has incredible star qualities. He scored 50 points in two playoff games against the Nuggets, a feat that has only been accomplished by three other players (Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Jamal Murray).
John Stockton was an 11-time All-NBA player and a Hall of Famer. Karl Malone made 14 All-NBA teams, the 5th most in NBA history. So saying that Mitchell is a star unlike Stockton & Malone is both incredibly high praise and a really high bar for the guard to live up to.
