Jazz VP says stars Mitchell and Gobert are ready to put rift behind them

A month ago it was reported the relationship between Utah Jazz team-mates Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert was "unsalvageable", but the pair are moving on.

Jazz executive vice-president of basketball operations Dennis Lindsey said the two All-Stars have since made up and are ready to move forward.

"They're ready to put this behind them, move forward, act professionally," Lindsey said on a conference call on Tuesday.

"Look, the night of March [11] was really unprecedented, it brought a microscope to our team, and we get it. With that said, we're very pleased with the collective makeup of our group – Donovan and Rudy in particular – and we look forward to moving forward.

"They've said their piece to each other. They've both visited at the ownership level, at management level, at the coaches' level, the players' level with each other, they're fully participating in our Zoom workouts."

Gobert became the first NBA player to test positive for coronavirus on March 11, which promptly triggered the league to suspend its season. A day later Mitchell tested positive, and he said Gobert did not take the illness seriously and was careless with the way he conducted himself. The following week on ABC, Mitchell said it "took a while for me to kind of cool off" at Gobert.

| “I firmly think our gratitude toward each other will be deeper. Deeper because we missed that camaraderie, because we missed that competition." https://t.co/2z1czc4GZ5

— utahjazz (@utahjazz) May 5, 2020

Their relationship is no longer shattered, according to Lindsey, and they are ready to work together when the season resumes to help Utah continue their playoff push. When the season went on pause, the Jazz were in fourth place in the Western Conference and 1.5 games behind the first-placed Denver Nuggets in the Northwest Division.

"They're ready to put this behind them, move forward, act professionally," Lindsey said.

"We're very pleased with the collective makeup of our group, Donovan and Rudy in particular. We look forward to moving forward."

"We fully expect the team to come together in a great way and continue to move forward as a group," he added. "And I think at the end of the day, Donovan and Rudy – I don't want to speak for them on every matter, they'll speak to themselves, moving forward – but I think at the most basic level, they know they need each other to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish of being the last team standing in the NBA."