Donovan Mitchell is on the verge of a big payday. One day after the Utah Jazz fell in Game 7 of their first round series to the Denver Nuggets, Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reports that the extension-eligible Mitchell and the Jazz will hammer out a new max contract right at the start of free agency this year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, free agency is slated to begin in mid-October.
As Mitchell explained to Haynes, he had some concerns about potentially getting hurt in the Bubble and jeopardizing that big payday, but they subsided pretty quickly.
“Once my teammates told me they wanted to play, then I was all in. I couldn’t make it all about myself,” Mitchell said. “There are younger guys who aren’t established in this league and needed this time to show their value. It would have been selfish of me to stand in the way of that. I couldn’t let my contract get in the way of the bigger picture. I had to rely on God. If I got hurt, it was God’s will. But I put my trust in Him and didn’t worry about potentially getting injured. That allowed me to go out there and play. My faith was in God.”
The max extension for a player in Mitchell’s situation is projected to be $170 million over five years. While Utah was unable to make it past Denver, the third-year All-Star guard was magnificent in the series, playing perhaps the best stretch of basketball in his young career. Mitchell averaged 36.3 points on 52.9 percent shooting from the field and 51.6 percent shooting for three against the Nuggets while chipping in five rebounds and 4.9 steals in 37.7 minutes a night.
Mitchell isn’t the only major piece to the Jazz’s puzzle that is eligible for a huge payday this fall. Rudy Gobert is eligible for a supermax extension, and there’s no word on how talks are progressing between the big man’s camp and the franchise.