By this point, it’s easy to feel like Rudy Gobert’s positive COVID-19 test and everything that happened in the aftermath occurred a decade ago. Instead, it’s been about a month, and there’s still a number of unresolved things that have yet to occur, like the NBA figuring out any sort of plan for playing games again.
The Utah Jazz are also trying to put out a fire that popped up due to Gobert’s test: the subsequent positive test received by Donovan Mitchell. It has previously been reported that Mitchell wasn’t particularly happy with Gobert, and a new piece by The Athletic takes things a step further, indicating that while the franchise is trying to stress to Mitchell that there’s no guarantee he got sick because of Gobert, there are major concerns about whether or not things will be cool between them going forward.
The Jazz have already begun working on the Mitchell-Gobert relationship, but sources say Mitchell remains reluctant to fix what might have been broken.
“It doesn’t appear salvageable,” one source with knowledge of the situation said.
Obviously the Jazz have a major problem on their hands if the two cornerstones of their franchise are not on good terms, especially considering Gobert is eligible for a supermax contract and Mitchell reportedly wants to put pen to paper on a new deal this summer. The good news is that at least one teammate isn’t particularly concerned with all of this — Joe Ingles told The Athletic the he has “no doubt when we go back to training, or when our season starts again, our team is going to be what we have been and what we are.” He was also appeared to address the report pretty succinctly…
https://twitter.com/Joeingles7/status/1248623731355701250
…and when he was asked about this, Ingles decided to crack a joke.
https://twitter.com/Joeingles7/status/1248633775610683392
Utah has plenty of time for this to all sort itself out — again, the Jazz-Thunder game that served as the major inflection point in all of this happened on March 11 — so we’ll see how this situation plays out over the coming days, weeks, and months.
