Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 90-89 summer league win over the Dallas Mavericks from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Cody Williams wins the night
After an anonymous stretch of summer league games in Utah, Williams’ first in Las Vegas was brilliant.
He still played very much within himself — but he did a very good job of taking what the defense gave him to score 21 points on 9-15 shooting overall and 3-6 from deep. What was there to like?
First, that he took as many shots as he did, period. Taking six threes in his action today was two more than he took in any game all season long at Colorado. You can tell that Williams still prefers to use the shot to set up the drive rather than the other way around, but it is still good to see his comfort level increase with just firing away. He’ll need that at the NBA level, and his postgame comments indicated he knew that, too.
But when he did get an open lane, in either half-court or transition, he really took advantage of it. The highlight of the night was the surprising dunk over the rotating Dallas defender, at 1:25 of the above video. Williams has impressed me with his rim finishing ability so far — dunks, sure, but mostly about his craft. I’m still trying to put my finger on it, but I think his off-foot jump and overall timing on when he finishes confuses defenders, giving him easy layups where others would get swatted. It’s great.
Overall, Williams has this air of patient confidence about him. For example, when he was asked about how he evaluates himself in summer league, he said “I don’t come into summer league with expectations, just because I’m a 19 year old going into the NBA. I gotta give myself to myself time to adjust and learn — so my only expectation was just learning and getting better.”
That’s pretty unique perspective for a lottery draftee; contrast that with Keyonte George’s summer league interviews, where he brashly said he wanted to win Rookie of the Year and wanted to prove he could be a force right away. I think Williams’ older brother being an NBA player, though, has given him a unique security and perspective on his own journey.
There’s strength to both approaches, and it’ll be interesting how Williams’ growth plays out in his chosen worldview.
2. Taylor Hendricks’ play inside
We got to see Taylor Hendricks play without Walker Kessler out there, which meant he would have to take a much larger role around the basket. How did he do?
The good: the shot-blocking. Hendricks does have a pretty unique ability to time attacking players’ jump and meet them at the apex for blocks; tonight, Hendricks did it in both half-court and transition. The length and athleticism is totally there and functional, and it is awesome to see.
It’s enjoyable to see him time these plays up so well. But I do think that his timing on everything else right now is very off.
He’s so easily stripped on dribble drives; it’s simply too high and if he’s bumped at all, he has a penchant for losing it. He simply isn’t an aggressive rebounder, and doesn’t make space for himself on the defensive glass nor tip out offensive rebounds. He’s also just not great at keeping advantages right now and keeping the ball moving, there is a processing delay.
We knew some of this going in, but the rebounding and playmaking deficiencies do make it really tough for the Jazz to pencil him into an NBA rotation right now. Or, well, they would make it tough if they wanted to win next year.
I do think Hendricks is going to be able to figure it out and be an NBA role player in his career, because the defensive instincts are there. I just worry that it’s going to take too long to happen, and then the Jazz won’t be able to take advantage of it in his rookie contract. (I fear a Dante Exum 2.0 outcome but as a forward, essentially.) Still, it’s too early to write him off in that way, and Hendricks’ youth and likely future playing time gives him significant potential.
3. Promote from within or replace from outside?
The Jazz gave Johnny Juzang a 4-year, $12 million contract this week.
He attended the summer league game and nearly everyone was excited to see him, to congratulate him on the big-money deal. Keyonte George came up and gave him a big hug. One of the Jazz’s staff made a big show of asking Juzang for his wallet, then trying to grab it out of his shorts as playfully as possible. It was fun.
Clearly, the Jazz are trying to make this an organizational ethos, where they prioritize promoting from within. There are better players on the free agent market than Juzang, but they like him, think he can play a spot role, and think there’s a chance he’s worth more than $3 million per year down the road if he continues improving. Sure.
Then, they replaced Juzang’s two-way slot with Taevion Kinsey, who did well in his role as a G-Leaguer for the Salt Lake City Stars. I like Kinsey, too. (They’re also clearly doing this with their coaching staff — a lot of organizations would have hired Will Hardy some outside help after this summer; instead, the Jazz promoted Sean Sheldon from their back of bench corps to the front. Same happened with, say, Shane Fenske and the assistant general manager job.)
The good news about all of this is that it sets an organizational culture, clearly something that matters to the franchise. The risk would be that you’re missing out on the chances to give those opportunities to outsiders. That approach has given the Jazz some wins (Joe Ingles, Royce O’Neale among them) but also some losses (Josh Christopher, Luka Samanic).
It’ll be interesting to see how this approach evolves, especially this season given the potential for real roster experimentation among the losses.
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