On March 11, 2020, the Utah Jazz were at the center of the sports world when Rudy Gobert's positive COVID-19 shut down the 2019-20 NBA season, starting a domino effect that changed sports for the following few of years. In an appearance on the latest episode of "The Old Man and The Three" podcast with JJ Redick, Donovan Mitchell stated that the Jazz players ended up getting drunk in the locker room after their game against the Oklahoma City Thunder was postponed.
"I wouldn't say it was panic in the locker room. It was just like, what can we do? We're just here," Mitchell said. "Shout out to (Chris Paul -- then with the Thunder), sent 15 bottles of wine that night. So we had food and then we (had) wine.
"We got drunk. I'm not gonna lie to you, we got drunk. Cause we're just like, alright, so there's definitely no game. We're not playing for a while, and you're in a moment where everybody's calling. Everybody's calling. We're on FaceTime with everybody. Anybody you can think of is calling everybody in this locker room. And we're sitting there like, we just don't know what's gonna happen. We're trying to drink to not be scared, like you know what I mean? One of those moments where you're helpless."
Mitchell and the rest of the Jazz players spent about nine hours in their locker room before they were permitted to leave the arena.
The All-Star guard, who now plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, also said that a man wearing a hazmat suit ended up driving the players back to a hotel. Mitchell wanted to see if he could find someone that could arrange a private plane to take the players back to Utah, but didn't have any luck in that pursuit.
"I'll never forget that night," Mitchell added. "I have pictures on my phone from that night that I'll probably frame up in my house at some point in time and tell my kids like, 'This is one of the biggest moments in sports, in history of the country.'"
The 2019-20 NBA season ended up being shut down until late July before returning to finish out the year inside of the bubble at Walt Disney World. It's certainly a moment that many will never forget, but Mitchell and his Jazz teammates will always have a wild story to tell.
