Donovan Mitchell has been sidelined with a sprained ankle for Utah’s last 17 games.
The Utah Jazz will have All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell back in the lineup for Wednesday’s Game 2 against the Memphis Grizzlies, the team confirmed on Monday.
Donovan is available to play in Game 2.
— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) May 24, 2021
Mitchell, who has been sidelined since mid-April with an ankle injury, expressed disappointment Monday with the team’s late decision to scratch him from its playoff-opening loss, but pointed to the importance of moving forward ahead of Game 2 “because we’ve got [expletive] to handle.”
- Game 2 on Wednesday: Grizzlies vs. Jazz (10 ET, TNT)
“Obviously, it’s no secret what happened,” Mitchell said. “I think for me, my team, I was definitely frustrated and upset that I wasn’t able to play. I’m a competitor. I felt I was ready to go. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I was ready to go when I spoke to you guys about 24 hours ago. They came to a decision. The biggest thing for us is moving forward. We lost Game 1. So, I understand it’s your job as media and you’ll ask me questions. But I wanted it to be known that we’re moving forward as a group, as a unit.”
Mitchell sat out of Utah’s 112-109 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies recovering from a sprained right ankle that kept him out of the Jazz lineup for the final 16 games of the regular season. Mitchell returned to practice on Thursday, and the team didn’t list him on its official injury report on Saturday or Sunday going into Game 1, before making the final decision to hold out the star ahead of the loss to Memphis.
Jazz coach Quin Snyder explained that Utah’s medical staff, after a morning shootaround, decided to hold out Mitchell.
After dropping Game 1 to Memphis, Utah's two-time All-Star guard is set to return.
“I think I addressed the process yesterday,” Snyder said. “Donovan always wants to be on the floor. He’s competitive. That’s something that he’s looking forward to. To the extent the processing and ascertaining that ultimate result is again ongoing. I think everybody’s excited that Donovan will be back.”
Mitchell admitted in a Zoom call with reporters that he felt some soreness in his right ankle after Sunday’s shootaround, but expressed excitement about the prospect of facing the Grizzlies in the opening round of the playoffs before the medical staff’s final decision.
“Honestly, I was ready to go, and the staff didn’t feel like I was ready,” he said. “That’s it. There wasn’t really more to it. There wasn’t a setback or anything. I was ready to go and compete, and unfortunately that wasn’t the case. At the end of the day, the experts said no. We can disagree on those things, but that was the frustration.”
Mitchell and the medical staff met ahead of Sunday’s game, after the group had run the guard through a series of tests on the ankle.
Mitchell said he felt like he let the team down by being unavailable for the Game 1 loss, saying “that probably hurts me more than anything else.”
Mitchell also disclosed that throughout his more than monthlong rehabilitation, he worked with his own personal training staff “in conjunction with the team,” he said.
Mitchell met briefly with his teammates Monday and told them, “Look, we’re in here together.”
“I want my teammates, first, before anything else to understand that that’s what it is,” Mitchell added. “At the end of the day, it was made to be a big thing. I understand that. We’re here to win games, and I couldn’t be out there to do that, and I was frustrated. It’s as simple as that. I felt like I was ready to play. That’s what happened. We’re here and we’re gonna move on from this and focus on Game 2. If we sit here and worry about that, then we’re not focused on the task at hand. We’re playing a really good Memphis team, and that’s why we’ve got to go out there and find a way to compete and go out there and win.”
Mitchell isn’t sure whether he’ll be on a minutes restriction for Game 2, saying “that’s a conversation to be had.” Mitchell also doesn’t anticipate a repeat of Sunday’s decision going into Game 2.
Dillon Brooks set a single-game Memphis scoring record for a player making their postseason debut Sunday by racking up 31 points in the upset over the Jazz. Ja Morant contributed 26 points, while Jonas Valanciunas added 15 points to go with 12 rebounds.
The Jazz connected on just 12 of 47 from deep, while committing 16 turnovers that led to 15 points for the Grizzlies.
Inside the NBA breaks down Utah's Game 1 loss to Memphis.
“You definitely can’t overreact. We understand that it’s a series,” Mitchell said. “They played well. They came out aggressive. Dillon Brooks played well. Ja Morant finished down the stretch. They’ve found what they do well. For us, we did a lot of things not so great. So, you combine that and there’s things we can look at and make adjustments. That’s the best part about the playoffs is we can make adjustments and go from there. We see things that we can definitely fix, adjust to and go from there. You’ve got to give them credit. They played well and competed for the full 48 minutes.”
As for the Mitchell’s individual situation, it’s something the star guard said he wanted to address immediately so that it doesn’t fester throughout the postseason as a potential distraction.
“This is the playoffs. We’re focused on one thing. This is not the time for all that,” Mitchell said. “We have phones. We have Twitter. We have Instagram. This has been everywhere. So, it’s one thing to kind of let it linger [or] you can just go ahead and kill it from the jump. That’s what I wanted to do. It’s playoff time. All the other stuff is whatever.”
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Michael C. Wright is a senior writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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