Year, Mitchell's performance improve as he was averaging 27.7 points in January and 25.4 in February, and the Jazz improved down the stretch, closing out the season with a 32–13 run to finish 50–32 and earned the fifth seed in the Western Conference playoffs. In the first round, they played against the Houston Rockets, who were on a run of their own, going 33–14 in 2019 after a slow start. Houston proved to be too much for the Jazz, taking the series 4–1. On May 10, 2019, the Jazz announced the promotion of Dennis Lindsey to executive vice president of basketball operations and Justin Zanik to general manager. During the 2019 off-season, the Jazz added several players by trade and free agency, including Jeff Green, Mike Conley Jr., Ed Davis, Bojan Bogdanović, and Emmanuel Mudiay, while Derrick Favors, Kyle Korver, Jae Crowder, Raul Neto, and Ricky Rubio left the team. Sports media viewed the changes as positive. On the opening day of the 2019–20 season, a press conference was held, announcing that Utah will host the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, which will be the second time the Jazz have hosted this event; the prior time was in 1993. On December 24, 2019, the Jazz announced that they had waived forward Jeff Green, signed G-League free agent Rayjon Tucker, and traded Dante Exum to the Cleveland Cavaliers for shooting guard Jordan Clarkson, whose trade in particular was seen as overwhelmingly positive by the media, if also bittersweet for Jazz fans who hoped that Exum would eventually mature into the franchise cornerstone he was drafted to be. On January 30, 2020, Gobert and Mitchell were named reserves for the 2020 NBA All-Star Game. This marked the first time since 2007 that multiple Utah Jazz players had been selected to the All-Star game, and the first time since 2000 that multiple Jazz players had actually appeared in the game (Mehmet Okur had replaced an injured Carlos Boozer in 2007). In March 2020, Gobert and Mitchell were diagnosed with COVID-19, making the Jazz the first major sporting franchise in North America to be directly affected by the disease, and resulting in the suspension of all remaining NBA games of the season. Following the suspension of the 2019–20 NBA season, the Jazz were one of the 22 teams invited to the NBA Bubble to participate in the final eight games of the regular season. The