Legendary college basketball coach Rick Pitino revealed details Thursday of a conversation he had with the New York Knicks’ front office about Donovan Mitchell prior to the 2017 NBA draft.
During an appearance on the Roommates Show with Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart of the Knicks (beginning at the 15:45 mark), Pitino said he called the Knicks and told them to take Mitchell with the No. 8 overall pick, only to be told they couldn’t do it.
“I call them up and said, ‘Listen, take my guy Donovan Mitchell. He’s going to kill it. Don’t pay attention to what you think some of his weaknesses are, he’s going to kill it. Take him,'” Pitino said. “They said, ‘Nah, I don’t know if we can take him that high.’ They wound up taking Frank Ntilikina. … They couldn’t take [Mitchell], it was too high, but they took Frank.”
Mitchell played his college basketball at Louisville from 2015 to 2017, and Pitino was his head coach during that time. While Mitchell was a First Team All-ACC selection in 2017, there were some questions about his game, as he shot only 40.8 percent from the field during his final season at Louisville.
That caused Mitchell to fall to the Utah Jazz at No. 13 overall, while the Knicks took Ntilikina eighth.
Over the course of his nine-year NBA career with the Jazz and Cleveland Cavaliers, Mitchell is a six-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA selection who has finished as high as fifth in the NBA MVP voting.
He boasts career averages of 24.9 points, 4.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds, 3.0 three-pointers made and 1.4 steals per game, while shooting 45.1 percent from the floor and 36.7 percent from deep.
As for Ntilikina, he went down as one of the biggest draft busts in recent memory, playing seven NBA seasons with the Knicks, Dallas Mavericks and Charlotte Hornets before leaving the league in 2024 to play in Serbia and then Greece.
In 321 career NBA regular-season games, Ntilikina averaged just 4.8 points, 2.2 assists and 1.8 rebounds, and shot 36.9 percent from the field.
The Knicks have managed to bounce back from their blunder by building a roster headlined by Brunson, Hart, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, but now they have to deal with Mitchell playing for one of the Eastern Conference’s other top contenders in the Cavs.
