Donovan Mitchell spent the first six seasons of his NBA career with the Utah Jazz, leaving incredible memories there. However, that team fell short in their attempts to win the NBA championship, play in the Finals, or even the Western Conference Finals.
Mitchell was never able to lead his squad to the promised land alongside Rudy Gobert, which prompted Danny Ainge to trade the team’s two stars and start over. Mitchell landed in Cleveland, while Gobert went to Minnesota in two big trades. On Tuesday night, Spida made his return to Salt Lake City as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, getting a big welcome from the people in Utah.
Even though he was shown love on Tuesday night, Mitchell talked about the struggles he had to deal with during his time with the Jazz and how some people made things difficult for him simply because of the color of his skin.
Donovan Mitchell Opens Up On His Experiences As A Black Man In Utah
During a recent and interesting piece, Kelsey Russo of The Athletic discussed all the speculation around Mitchell returning to Salt Lake City after his blockbuster trade. The player ended the game with 46 points, but the Jazz still took the win, making things hard for him.
Mitchell had to experience people treating him the wrong way because of the color of his skin, which has been a recurrent topic around the league when it comes to the Utah Jazz.
There were a couple of reasons for the speculation around Mitchell’s return to Utah, but the two go hand-in-hand. The first is the offseason saga of the Jazz, eventually moving Mitchell and him landing in Cleveland.
Secondly — and more prominently — dealt with Mitchell’s use of his platform to speak out about racial inequality and show his support for movements that focused on racial equality. Over his five years in Salt Lake City, Mitchell continuously spoke up to varying degrees on a number of issues surrounding social justice, racism and equality.
“I really want to harp on the fact that I don’t speak on everybody when I bring up what I bring up. And I think that’s something that gets lost in the shuffle,” Mitchell said. “It’s easy to point out the negative. We live in a world where everything’s funneled through it. But at the end of the day, we did a lot of good, man and I think that’s something that I want to make sure it’s always harped on. But I’m not gonna stop using my voice the way that I feel like I should.”
Russo added that Mitchell had talked about this before, and he was somehow ‘stopped’ from speaking his truth due to all the backlash he could receive on social media.
In a recent interview with Marc Spears for Andscape, Mitchell spoke of how draining it had been as a Black man to receive pushback on attempts to progress conversations about racial inequality. And social media only worsened that feeling.
“It’s not every fan; it’s not everybody,” Mitchell reiterated. “But there are things that I see and here that I didn’t bring up in the interview, and I didn’t want to bring up because I knew how much it would get a reaction on social media.”
This is really concerning, but it’s nothing new that we’ve heard about the Jazz. They’ve been accused of being the most racist fandom in the league, and even some of his players say that. That’s why Vernon Maxwell hates them so much, just like many more people around the NBA.
We sincerely appreciate and respect you as a reader of our site. It would help us a lot if you follow us on Google News because of the latest update.
Thanks for following us. We really appreciate your support.
