This Year’s Junior Jazz

Jarrell Brantley is one of several Jazz rookies who haven’t played much. (Melissa Majchrzak via espn.com)

The Year of the Rookie?

In the midst of a rebuild, the 2014-15 Utah Jazz had a record nine different rookies get playing time. Those rookies played 5,782 combined minutes.

This year, the Jazz have had seven different rookies see the floor, the second most in team history. Remarkably, however, those rookies have barely played as they have combined for only 216 minutes total through 57 games played. This is an anomaly in the NBA. There are some teams whose rookies have played fewer total minutes than the Jazz rookies like the Spurs, Lakers and Mavericks but none of those teams has more than three rookies on the roster. Similarly, there are other teams with a lot of rookies on the roster like the Celtics, Warriors and Thunder but every team that has four or more rookies on the roster has played those rookies at least 750 combined minutes.

Filling out the roster

The front office decided to swing big when they traded for Mike Conley and signed Bojan Bogdanovic during the offseason, knowing that doing so would require filling out the roster with league-minimum contracts. Signing marquee free agents in Utah has always been a challenge that was only made more difficult with the number of players who the Jazz could only offer league minimum contracts. Signing veteran journeymen like Ed Davis, Jeff Green and Emmanuel Mudiay was the kind of move typically expected of a team that needs to fill out the roster with little cap flexibility.

But the Jazz also looked overseas, after successfully mining prospects Royce O’Neale and Joe Ingles in recent seasons. The signings of Stanton Kidd and William Howard did not work out and so far 2017 second-round pick Nigel Williams-Goss has barely seen the floor. The Jazz also acquired three second round picks in the 2019 draft with which they selected Miye Oni, Jarrell Brantley and Justin Wright-Foreman. Shortly after the season started, the Jazz were also able to pick up Juwan Morgan as an undrafted rookie. Morgan started the season as a standout with the Salt Lake City Stars in the G-League before being signed to the main roster in the spot vacated by Kidd’s waiver. Finally, once it became clear that the Jeff Green experiment was not working, the Jazz signed Rayjon Tucker who played some great ball on the Bucks’ G-League affiliate, the Milwaukee Herd. 

No Playing Time Available

From the beginning of the season it was clear that the Jazz had higher goals for this season than in years past. With all the turnover on the roster, it was going to take time for all the players to click and it was not expected that the rookies would see a lot of playing time. Still, it was a little surprising that even including garbage time all the rookies together only combined for 42 minutes played. Thirty of those minutes went to Kidd, who was waived 14 games into the season, and Williams-Goss who has only played 13 minutes since.

For the second quarter of the season, rookies started to see the floor a little bit more as the Jazz gave some spot duty to Tucker in Decemberr and more recently to Morgan, whom the Jazz have tried to use as their version of a small-ball center. Together, Morgan and Tucker played 72 minutes from game 21-41 with the rest of the Jazz rookies spending time on the Stars or seeing garbage-time only.

In the last 16 games, Morgan and Tucker remain the rookies to watch as Morgan has played some more small-ball center and Tucker has been used in spot minutes to try and bring some energy to the court. Again, the only time other rookies see the floor is in garbage-time. The emphasis on figuring out the rotations and lineups for the 2020 Jazz makes sense, but it has definitely been at the expense of any development for the rookies.

Rotation and Prospects

This is the time of year when teams try to add any last pieces to the puzzle as they gear up for the playoffs. The Jazz of late are in desperate need of a shake-up. When looking at the buyout market, playoff teams are looking for players who can contribute and not for prospects. Right now it would be nice if the Jazz had a vet or two they could turn two when the starters are normal rotation players aren’t clicking. Instead, the Jazz have two rookies in Tucker and Morgan who have barely played in the NBA and are not ready for large roles. 

Ed Davis hasn’t worked out. Tony Bradley didn’t look like an NBA player in his first two years and doesn’t seem ready for the playoffs now. Despite this being his third year in the league, he only played 65 total minutes in his first two seasons and this may as well be his “true” rookie season. At a time when the Jazz need a shakeup, they have a lot of decent looking prospects on the roster but little veteran depth. Morgan, Tucker, Oni, Brantley and Wright-Foreman have all played well in the G-League. But the roster really only goes eight or nine deep with playable veterans. After that, the roster is full of unproven prospects who haven’t seen the court.

This may bode well for the Jazz’s future. Having watched a lot of Brantley, Oni and Morgan in the G-League, I believe they will have a place in NBA rotations in the future and there’s a reason why Tucker is earning minutes and was the talk of the G-League’s Winter Showcase this year. But in the present, if the top eight or so guys on the Jazz aren’t clicking, Quin Snyder doesn’t really have anybody to turn to. And, so far, he hasn’t really wanted to either.