What to Expect From a Rookie Starter at Point Guard

What can Jazz fans expect from the rookie now that he has the keys to the offense? (Stacy Bengs via sltrib.com)

During the offseason, many Utah Jazz fans were arguing for Keyonte George to be thrown into the fire as the starter right away, while others felt like his transition into becoming the lead floor general should be more of a slow burn. The consensus though was that Key should be considered the point guard of the future to lead the Utah Jazz.

Likely sooner than most of us expected, it appears that the early struggles of the Jazz forced Will Hardy’s hand. For the first eight games of the season, the starters had been Talen Horton-Tucker, Jordan Clarkson, Lauri Markkanen, John Collins, and Walker Kessler. In 174 possessions, that lineup had an offensive rating of 101.1 and a defensive rating of 122.5. The -21.4 differential was in the fifth percentile of all lineups. Clearly something had to change, and with Kessler’s injury already making a lineup shift necessary, Hardy surprised many by going with George and Ochai Agbaji alongside Clarkson, Markkanen and Collins.

It’s a small sample size of three games with two of the teams being pretty poor, but the offensive rating has jumped to 113.2, while the defensive rating has improved to a 118.1 even without Kessler. The defense still has not been good… but it’s not worse.

Keyonte himself has had some very strong moments to go along with some opportunities. The most obvious positives have been his ability to run the offense. It feels like the Jazz have done a much better job of getting into their offensive sets, and the offensive has looked less stagnant with him running the show. Coming out of Baylor, the biggest question was on his ability to create for others versus creating for himself. He had a negative assist-to-turnover ratio during his freshman season at Baylor. In three games as a starter, he has 27 assists to just 5 turnovers. Which is a huge deal when you are talking about a team that was leading the NBA in turnovers per game.

There have been other positive side effects as well. Maybe the biggest beneficiary being Clarkson, who has been able to transition back into more of his score-first mode. Clarkson seemed to be in a funk to start this season, but with George taking on the responsibility of running the offense, Clarkson has jumped up to averaging 29.7 points and has still managed to chip in four assists per game. Three games, but encouraging to see nonetheless, because the Jazz need his offense to pair with Markkanen’s.

The two opportunities would be the defensive impacts to Keyonte being on the floor more, and his willingness to look for his own shot as well.

Defensively, the Jazz haven’t necessarily played well all season. A large part of the defensive issues have been due to transition defense both off of rebounds and live ball turnovers. While George taking better care of the ball than our other guards could help to limit transition opportunities, it is still only a matter of time before opposing teams start trying to hunt him on that end of the floor to see how he holds up. For most rookie guards, that doesn’t end up well.

The other thing to keep an eye on will be George’s willingness to score the ball. It’s interesting that that is an opportunity, considering that his strength coming out of college was his ability to score the ball from all three levels on the court. Until now, he had never really been asked to be a true point guard. It’s clear that he is working on finding the balance between creating for others verses himself. He’s passing up scoring opportunities that he would normally take advantage of. When he starts taking advantage of those opportunities, he’ll not only get into a better rhythm scoring the ball, but it will open-up additional looks for those playing around him.

With Keyonte looking like he’ll be the starter for the rest of the season, it got me wondering how other rookie point guards have performed historically. Most would say that point guard is the hardest position to jump into for a young NBA player. Similar to a quarterback in the NFL, it’s just a lot of weight to put on a young players shoulders.

To compare, I looked at ten of the most recent point guards selected in the top half of the first round of the draft who eventually became rookie starters. The list included Scoot Henderson, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Suggs, LaMelo Ball, Ja Morant, Darius Garland, Trae Young, De’Aaron Fox, and Jamal Murray.

The precendent for recent rookie starters at PG

A few things to disect from those results. First, Ball, Morant and Trae Young are clearly outliers. Each was selected in the top five of the draft, was given a high usage right away, and really hit the ground running. Each of those guards led a team whose record at the end of the season was somewhere between 29-53 (Trae’s Hawks) and the mid 30s (33-39 for Ball and the Hornets, Ja and the Grizzlies were 34-39). Most rookie point guard, even with decent looking counting stats, do not contribute to winning.

Henderson was supposed to rival rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama for rookie of the year, but even if he looks like he belongs physically, he has looked completely outmatched in his five starts.

The two that jump out to me are Garland and Murray, because they seem like good player comps for George. Garland started every game his rookie season, and finished with averages of 12.3 points, 3.9 assist, and shot only 40 percent from the field overall. The Cavs finished with a 19-46 record. Their team offensive and defensive ratings were both in the bottom five of the league. Murray, who is perhaps the most common player comp we hear for Keyonte, only started 10 games his entire rookie season. Most of them were just spots starts due to injury, and then he started 6 of the final 7 games of the season. He averaged 9.9 points, 2.1 assist, and shot 40.4 percent. The Nuggets finished 40-42 that season, and were starting Jameer Nelson and Emmanuel Mudiay over him.

I guess the main point of all of this is to temper expectations. Keyonte has shown some great signs that point towards a bright future, but their will surely be ups and downs in his play that Jazz fans will have to be patient about. Especially if you were a believer in the Jazz making a run at the Play-in Tournament for the Western Conference. None of those players listed above led a team to an above .500 record. My advice, focus on the good, be patient through the bad, and look for the progression in his play month over month.