Mitchell gives $12M to school
After signing a five-year, $195 million rookie extension this offseason, Jazz star Donovan Mitchell is sharing the wealth.
Mitchell and his family agreed to the largest single pledge of support in the history of the Greenwich Country Day School, promising $12 million to the school he graduated from in 2012, according to a press release Friday.
His mother, Nicole, was a lower elementary school teacher at GCDS from 2007 until just last year and his sister, Jordan, graduated from the school in 2017.
Some of the funds will be used for the Mitchell Family Scholarship Fund, which is set to help GCDS “remain a leader in providing needbased aid for students in grades Nursery through 12,” per the release. There will also be a Nicole Mitchell Faculty Support Fund, awarded annually at the opening faculty meeting to a teacher in each of the four divisions at the school who has demonstrated the “passion, enthusiasm, optimism, and love for children always shown by Nicole Mitchell.”
Additionally, Mitchell’s donation will be used to build “The Determination Over Negativity Mitchell Family Athletic Center.” According to the announcement, it will be a “stateof-the-art gymnasium and will house one full court (NCAA regulation court) with full stands on both sides.”
During the 2019-20 playoffs in the Orlando bubble, Mitchell became the third player in NBA history to score 50 or more points twice in a playoff series, joining Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson.
It was a no-brainer for Utah to extend Mitchell, who quickly asserted himself as a cornerstone of the organization when he was runner-up for the rookie of the year award, to a guaranteed $163 million deal with an incentivized maximum of $195 million.