facebook-pixel

Donovan Mitchell looking forward to Thursday’s All-Star draft; Nuggets severely short-handed coming into game

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell (45) as the Utah Jazz host the Sacramento Kings, NBA basketball in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2020.

  | Feb. 6, 2020, 1:56 a.m.

All-Star team captains LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo will select their teams in the NBA’s televised draft on TNT at 5 p.m MST on Thursday. Donovan Mitchell was asked about his preferences in the draft: Does he want to be drafted by James or Antetokounmpo?

“I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “I’d rather just play with Rudy (Gobert).”

Diplomatic as always, Mitchell is.

“I don’t mean to sound corny when I say that, I’m actually serious. I think that’d be cool for us to enjoy the moment together," he said. “But then if we do play against each other, I can kind of get back at him for what happened in the France/USA game. I grew up a LeBron fan, so that’d be kind of special, but there’s no one like Giannis in the league. I wouldn’t mind playing for either team, to be honest.”

Short-handed Nuggets

It was a tough situation for the Nuggets coming into Wednesday night’s contest. They have three players that had to sit out of the game due to a pending trade: Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez and Jarrod Vanderbilt were part of the four-team, 12-player deal that will send Shabazz Napier, Keita Bates-Diop, Gerald Green and Noah Vonleh to Denver. That last group of players wasn’t available either.

Then there were injuries. Jerami Grant was described as “highly questionable” before the game by Nuggets coach Mike Malone thanks to his ankle sprain; Will Barton was described as “highly doubtful” due to right knee inflammation. Michael Porter Jr. is out due to his right ankle injury, while Paul Millsap is out due to a left knee sprain. Bol Bol has been out for the whole season due to his left foot injury.

“No, I’ve never been a part of a game where you could potentially only have seven guys suiting up," Malone said. "It got to the point today, I even looked up the rules within the staff meeting to see what happens if you’re down to five guys and a player fouls out and how does the NBA handle that.”

Here’s what the rule is: If a player gets his sixth foul with only five players left in the game, that payer stays in the game, but his team is assessed a technical foul and the opposing team gets to shoot a free throw. Every subsequent foul he gets is also a technical foul.