Utah Jazz need some vintage Mitchell; could strange tweet summon him?

The Utah Jazz need Donovan Mitchell to break out in the worst way. To that end, a questionable tweet from Doug Gottlieb could provide some motivation.

Praise be unto the basketball gods! The Utah Jazz — losers of four of their last five games — have been without leading scorer Donovan Mitchell for two and half games. It was bad times, indeed, but Jazz Nation just got the good news that the star guard is good to go for Wednesday night’s bout with the Brooklyn Nets.

Of course, to ensure victory against a feisty, young Nets squad, Mitchell can’t just show up — he’s got to bring the goods. And, really, a big night from Mitchell could do wonders for the team’s mojo. To that end, he probably doesn’t need any extra motivation, but he certainly got some in the form of a weird tweet from hoops analyst and radio host Doug Gottlieb.

After the Jazz got waxed for the second time by the Indiana Pacers on Monday, Gottlieb hit Twitter with a less than savory appraisal of the squad, as well as the relationship between Mitchell and his teammates.

In short, he essentially opined that the Jazz are broken, Mitchell is bad and his teammates don’t like him. Check it out —

The tweet didn’t go unnoticed; Jazz fans went bananas on Gottlieb for his assessment. Meanwhile, The Athletic’s Tony Jones urged them to tune out the noise, which prompted Gottlieb to double-down —

Criticizing the team is one thing, but the bit about Mitchell and his fellow Jazzmen being at odds is particularly, well…odd.

As it happens, Ricky Rubio, Royce O’Neale, Ekpe Udoh, Jae Crowder, Georges Niang and Alec Burks just spent the night before the Nets game supporting Mitchell at an Adidas event in Brooklyn. I’d say that’s a strange thing to do if you resent a guy.

Getting back to the initial tweet, though, it’s noteworthy that Mitchell himself both came across and “liked” it. In the past, he’s made a point to bookmark criticism this way and, presumably, use it as fuel for his competitive fire.

If you ask me, that’s a good thing, and absolutely worth the annoyance of someone like Gottlieb slamming your team and hatching conspiracy theories about its players.

In any case, given that it will be his comeback game and that he has, admittedly, had his struggles recently (he’s shooting just 41 percent on the year and 29 percent from distance), Mitchell could probably use a breakout as much as the Jazz do.

I hope he gets one against the Nets, if for no other reason than to silence another critic.