What Made Me

Rookie sensation DONOVAN MITCHELL’s come up has been oneof the League’s best stories this season, but ask the people around himand you’ll learn pretty quickly that this is only the beginning.

- Adam Figman

TAP! TAP! TAP!

All day long, a young Donovan Mitchell would jump up toward the archway that separated his family’s living room from their dining room at their house in Elmsford, NY, slapping the wall at the highest point he could reach.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

“You’re dirtying up my walls!” Nicole Mitchell, Donovan’s mother, would yell at him.

A decade-plus later, Nicole sat courtside as Donovan flew through the air time and time again en route to a 2018 Slam Dunk Contest victory in Los Angeles. He leapt over his little sister Jordan, along with comedian Kevin Hart and Hart’s son. He re-enacted a classic Vince Carter dunk—while wearing a Vinsanity jersey, no less. He tossed two alley-oops off the backboard to himself. Nicole was amazed by his ability to soar, but not surprised— she’s been watching him practice for that moment for a while.

“Whether he had so much energy that he had to jump up and down or he knew [jumping in the living room] is how he could get up closer toward the rim, he’s been working on that vertical for quite some time now,” she says. “It paid off.”

It’s been a theme as of late—years of hard work paying off all at once for the 21-year-old rookie. He was drafted last June by the Utah Jazz, a franchise that played in a city he had visited for the first time during his predraft workout. Then he started the season relatively slowly, averaging 9.4 points through the first seven games of his career. “I was just focusing on all the wrong things,” he says.