𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Donovan Mitchell on what his team will be taking from this hard-fought seven-game series win over the Pistons:

💬 “So many lessons. Obviously, the way we handled being down 2-0. Great response. Then we win three in a row. And then, I don’t want to say we got lackadaisical, but I think we let our foot off the gas in Game 6. We kind of expected the game to be handed to us. And that’s a lesson, right?

“For a team that’s been together for two and a half, three months (with James Harden) we’re gonna go through those ups and downs. The biggest thing is, we didn’t let it mess with us mentally. We knew what it was. And we gotta be better in that regard. And we responded tonight.”

Mitchell also gave a big smile when Prime Video’s Taylor Rooks that he finally has the conference finals “monkey” off his back.

💬 “Honestly, nothing’s changed. I think I’m the same guy. As a leader, I’ve definitely grown but it’s just about circumstance. … Sometimes, it’s just not your time. You can do everything you want to do and sometimes, whether I’ve been close and I’ve had an ankle injury. I’ve been close and we’ve failed.

“You’ve just gotta continue to fight. I said it after we lost against Indiana, like what are we gonna do, quit? No. Even if we had lost tonight, we would have come back again next year.

“The biggest thing was just to keep trusting the process and trust the work. … Definitely a mental test though, two Game 7s back-to-back definitely is a test. That’s why you put the work in. We got here, but we didn’t get here just to be here. I’m not gonna be in New York just happy that we got here.

“They’ve been off for 3 weeks, it feels like, so we understand that they’re rested.”