NBA Free Agency 2013: Utah Jazz Point Guard Jamaal Tinsley: a three year review

NBA Free Agency is upon us. Well, it will be in a few hours. And we have a lot of free agents on the team:

• Bigs: Al Jefferson (review), Paul Millsap (review)
• Wings: DeMarre Carroll (review),
• Guards: Mo Williams (review), Randy Foye (review), Jamaal Tinsley (review), and Earl Watson (review)

The Jazz also have non-guaranteed contracts with Kevin Murphy and Jerel McNeal to sort out, and we have yet to sign all the players we have draft rights for (Trey Burke, Rudy Gobert, Raul Neto, Ante Tomic, Shan Foster, and Peter Fehse). All that said the team has some money to spend if they want; however, conventional wisdom states that they'll be going lean and hungry this year. Or something to that effect. Here's the great table by Peter again just so you see what we're working with:

So all of our unrestricted free agents have put in their time here and deserve their own posts. Let's take a look at Jamaal Tinsley.

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Who is Jamaal Tinsley?

Jamaal is the guy I didn't want on the team because it meant the end of Ronnie Price. All of that history aside, Jamaal was born to play basketball. He has played in over 500 games and nearly 15,000 total minutes in the NBA. He was a 1st round draft pick who came onto the scene from the playgrounds and then to Iowa St. University. From an impressive rookie year where he averaged 9.4 ppg and 8.1 apg he has never really put it all together over his 10 year NBA career. He even spent a year out of the NBA, and clawed his way back through the NBA-DL. He has played the last two seasons with the Jazz. He's not getting any younger, but he still has a lot of razzle dazzle to his game.

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What has he done for the Jazz?

Jamaal was our third string PG in 2011-12 until Earl Watson finished the season injured, and Jamaal had to play big minutes in the playoffs. Earl remained injured almost perpetually all last season, and was the second string point guard in 2012-13 for most of the season. He ended up starting 32 games for us due to further point guard injuries, which was his most games started since 2007. The Tinman did not complain about minutes when he was sitting, and he was ready when his name was called.

He is limited and actually older than Earl Watson, but held up okay for the most part. He made a great recovery on his three point shot as the season went along, and helped our team when they counter attacked in transition. He made the right pass and got our team easy buckets. In the halfcourt he was dared to shoot, and stepped up to hit some big three pointers with little time on the clock.

At this stage of his career he's less like the Tinman who was heartless on the court, and more like father time.

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What was his last contract like?

Jamaal had a partially guaranteed deal this year, which was expected to be for $2 million dollars, but it was revealed to be for $1.35 million instead. He's at that stage of his career where he's going to be accepting $1 million and change contracts for the rest of his short career.

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What do the stats say?

The stats are not kind to Jamaal either.

If you include his last season with the Memphis Grizzlies as his "last three seasons" (which was in 2009-2010) then he has played in 141 games his last three years. He averages 47.0 games a season, and plays 16.4 mpg in those games. Tinsley has averaged 3.5 ppg (37.9 fg%, 27.6 3pt%, 75.7 ft%), 3.7 apg (2.36 A:TO ratio), 1.6 rpg, 0.8 spg, and one sports center highlight / month. He's a little different than Earl, and showed it last year in particular.

In 2012-13 Jamaal played in 66 games, and played 18.5 mpg. He averaged 3.5 ppg (36.8 fg%, 30.7 3pt%, 69.2 ft%), 4.4 apg (2.74 A:TO ratio), 1.7 rpg, 1.0 spg and seriously, dude started 32 games for us. That says a lot.

He was steady, and occasionally spectacular. But he was not consistent. Some weeks he'd end up going 5/28, and then the next game go 7/10. Or at least that's what it seemed like. He was occasionally spectacular. I don't know if that's the guy who you can bank on. Then again, this was the case with all of our guards last season, so I'm not going to knock him for it.

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Benefit to the team going forward?

Jamal Tinsley still looks to have more game in him than Earl does, and showed that he could still contribute in a pinch with his 32 starts last year. He nearly played 20 mpg as a back up, and helped us win some games. Earl is more of a defender, but it remains to be seen how well he can defend at this age with so many injuries. It remains to be seen how much Jamaal has in the tank as well. Both have little utility to the Jazz in the future as players, but I think Jamaal (who has played 5,000 less minutes over their careers) is a little fresher. To contrast this, Earl seems like a better teacher than Jamaal, who had more talent.

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Bottom line:

This is a tough situation because he clearly can play and is content, or smart enough, not to complain about minutes. He's ready when called up and can hit the open three. He's capable of throwing lob passes like Earl does, and running a team up-tempo or in the half court. I think he's a better player, despite all of the great thing Earl has done for the team, I am leaning towards bringing Jamaal back, and letting Earl . . . I don't know . . . what is it that Earl will do?

The major problem is that as a Jazz fan we like our guys. We like Earl. We like Jamaal. If we could fuse them into one really old mentor PG then we'd be fine. Instead we may have to pick one or the other.