Two years into his NBA career with the Utah Jazz, Donovan Mitchell is a rising star. He won the Slam Dunk contest and made the all-rookie team in his debut season. Now he has his own Adidas shoe line after making back-to-back appearances in the Rising Stars game and earning a spot on the Team USA roster ahead of this summer’s FIBA World Cup.
Before all that, there was the Donovan Mitchell at Louisville, a precocious player for Rick Pitino’s Cardinals. He was a physical freak, an avid learner, a voracious eater, a decent drummer, a diehard New York Mets fan, a prolific video gamer and, above all else, a fierce competitor. The coaches, players and support staffers who spent two years with and around him all say they saw stardom in Mitchell’s future, but they weren’t sure his rise would happen so rapidly.
This is an oral history of Mitchell’s college career and how a big kid with a bright future morphed into a lottery pick and one of the…
