[Andscape] Donovan Mitchell: “To see [Paul’s] career end the way did, I think it’s BS. I don’t know… when you have a guy like that, there’s a level that he has to be [respected] and he wasn’t given that opportunity, which I think is messed up.”
I wouldn’t be in the NBA if it wasn’t for Chris Paul and Paul George. Those two told me after a workout when I was making my decision to stay in the draft or come back, they said, ‘Hey you need to be in the league. You don’t need to go back to school,’ in a situation where I’m 19. I was trying to figure out what do I do. Do I need to go back to school? How do I figure it out?
And this wasn’t with NIL where you can come back. It was like, if you go, you go, and that’s it. So, I’m freaking out. There’s no testing the waters. It’s how you make a decision. And for them to kind of give me that guidance and motivation to go make that move when I was terrified of what I should do, to be honest — because I didn’t see this happening for myself — but they saw it. And I appreciate [Paul] for that because he didn’t really gain anything from doing that.”
To see [Paul’s] career end the way did, I think it’s BS. I don’t know. I don’t see all the reports. I don’t know the ins and outs of everything. That’s not my job. But I know when you have a guy like that, there’s a level that he has to be [respected] and he wasn’t given that opportunity, which I think is messed up. But all that being said, he’s a hell of a person. Hell of a point guard. Hell of a player. He has done so much for this game. As a president of the [players’ union] he’s done so much for us. I was going to pay my respect to CP, because he’s done so much for me, but also for the game of basketball.