As the Jazz prepared to tip off, Nicole Mitchell was confused. Why was her son running onto the floor? He wasn’t a starter.
She counted the players. Five on the floor. No Rodney Hood. She started tearing up as she realized that her son, Donovan Mitchell, was about to make his NBA regular season debut faster than anyone anticipated.
As Hood went to the locker room with gastric distress, the No. 13 pick of the NBA draft made his first start unexpectedly. And it had some rocky moments in the blur of a first quarter which Mitchell said afterward he could hardly remember at all.