6/11/2023 0 Comments Shaq donovan mitchell![]() ![]() We’ll learn what aspects of their performance were real and which were merely suggestive. We’ll all know, in the end, what it meant that the Jazz had the best record in the West and a top-four net rating at this stage in the season. The NBA’s Youngest Team Is Also One of Its Deepest A final verdict will be pulled from a larger, more complicated body of work. The games will show whether Utah can win at the highest levels of the league. But Mitchell and the Jazz don’t have to prove anything to Shaq. What do you have to say about that?” Mitchell answered confidently and diplomatically, considering the question-was it even a question?-carried only the weight of the hot air that made it. “I said tonight that you are one of my favorite players, but you don’t have what it takes to get to the next level,” Shaq blustered last month at Mitchell as he ignored another sound win by the Jazz, their seventh straight in what would be an 11-game win streak. On its most superficial level, that vetting might look like Shaquille O’Neal bludgeoning Donovan Mitchell with his half-formed takes on live television. The reward for those lucky enough to actually be in the running is a monthslong vetting process, inexact and often inelegant, to determine whether a good team has the survival instincts to outlast an entire conference. Reality is more selective even in a boom year, only a handful of teams have a nontrivial chance of winning it all, leaving somewhere around three-quarters of the league to twist about in their shorted ambitions. Any NBA player can say their team will be vying for the title this season, and an implausible number of them will. Barkley and Smith counted the ways Mitchell can’t take over a game, despite the guard posting a 21-point, three-rebound, two-assist first half.ĭuring Mitchell’s walk-off postgame interview with the TNT crew, O’Neal offered Mitchell a critique that felt more like an indictment on the guard’s play than a question about the game leading to a cringeworthy standoff between the Hall of Famer and the All-Star.Contending for a championship is a burden of proof. O’Neal insisted Mitchell would be better served as the second or third option on a championship level team. Shaq was ready to walk off the set when Kenny Smith said Rudy Gobert was one of the best players in the league /AZjxkEVqJlĪ couple of weeks later, during the halftime show of a nationally televised Jazz game, O’Neal and Barkley ripped Mitchell for not doing more to elevate Utah’s production. ![]() “You average 11 points in the NBA, you can get $200 million.” “I’m not gonna hate, but this should be an inspiration to all the little kids out there,” O’Neal said. O’Neal took off his glasses before standing and stating that Gobert wasn’t one of the best players in the NBA. ![]() “This guy is one of the best…” Smith argued before O’Neal interrupted him in the playful exchange. On January 7, 2021, during a segment of TNT’s Inside the NBA, O’Neal devalued Gobert’s impact on the floor, while fellow former NBA players, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, came to the Jazzman’s defense. O’Neal has criticized Mitchell, Gobert, and the Jazz in the past. "I think Rudy can hold you to like 12 points." "Yeah…in the first 3 minutes!" □ #TheBigPodcast: /Yfz3jutQRN O’Neale laughed off the statement, “Yeah - in the first three minutes.” “I think Rudy can hold you to like 12 points,” Spice Adams interjected. ![]()
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