Boston Celtics: 3 stars Cs could pursue instead of Zach LaVine

Utah blows it up and sends Donovan Mitchell somewhere he can win

When Shaquille O’Neal put Donovan Mitchell on blast for not proving capable of being a leader on a winning team, the Utah Jazz followed that up by proving his point exactly.

Losing to the Los Angeles Clippers in the second round of the postseason would have been acceptable had Kawhi Leonard been in the lineup. That it happened without him, and with Utah at full strength, shows this team is going nowhere fast.

2020-21 was supposed to be their redemption year after all of the drama between Mitchell and Rudy Gobert following the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, when Gobert was seen purposefully touching things in the locker-room.

Instead, it was a bad look…and a lack of success to start the 2021-22 season could be the death knell for the Mitchell-Jazz relationship.

If somehow Brad Stevens can land Mitchell without dangling Jaylen Brown, then this deal has to go down. Mitchell is a stick of dynamite scorer that would be unstoppable with two gifted point producers like Brown and Jayson Tatum beside him.

Utah’s success (or lack thereof) controls whether or not that would actually be possible.