Utah Jazz 2016-17 Preview: Roster

The 2016-2017 Utah Jazz season is hours away. I’m months away from being ready for this season (from a writer’s pov), but so ready for it to start as a fan. Because my main audience is comprised with mostly fans, I know you’re looking at the clock like it’s the last day of school — waiting to get out for the summer. I can’t wait for the games to start. I haven’t done much “in detail” previewing here, but here’s a look at the roster composition after all the training camp cuts.

The team captains are Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors. Bigman Rudy Gobert is going to make a lot of noise this year. But the team is deeper than ever before. Let’s dig in.

Where ya from:

Who you are is a product of your experiences. If you travel a lot you keep a little bit of everywhere you’ve been with you, forever.

AllThatAmar

Some of these guys were drafted -- and high too like Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert. Others were steals at where they were selected, like Rudy Gobert, Raul Neto, Rodney Hood, George Hill, and, arguably, Trey Lyles. Utah had a number of undrafted guys in camp like Chris Johnson, Quincy Ford, Eric Dawson, Henry Sims — but only one made the team: Joe Ingles.

Trey Lyles remains the youngest player on the team. Joe Johnson is the eldest. I wonder what their relationship is like?

The Long and Short:

Utah has tremendous length with Rudy Gobert. But it’s not just him! As far as point guards go, George Hill and Dante Exum have super long wingspans. They also have some speed they can possibly build around too.

AllThatAmar

But the biggest surprise? Joel Bolomboy makes Jeremy Evans look ordinary. Please note that this data is synthesized from DraftExpress.com, Wikipedia.org, NBA.com, and Basketball-Reference.com. Things like their combine results from the early 2000s may not mean much anymore. Also, I don’t have the updated values from P3 -- but some things are mostly static, like hand sizes and so forth.

#ThankYouBasedAnthopometrics

Age and Experience:

The Jazz have had a lot of youth, but not much experience outside of ‘rent-a-vets’. The three big names brought in this off season (Joe Johnson, Boris Diaw, George Hill) have over 9,000 combined career NBA Playoff minutes. The rest of the team? Only 541. Yeah.

AllThatAmar

This was needed. This data was taken from Basketball-Reference.com, RealGM.com, and of course, their college data which knows that Eric Dawson exists, but doesn’t have much info on him.

Salary Structure:

The Jazz recently announced that they’ve taken the team options on Dante Exum, Rodney Hood, and Trey Lyles. That puts some salary on the books, but honestly? It’s not that much because they are all on their rookie salaries still.

AllThatAmar

The big fish are yet to be paid — Gordon Hayward, Rudy Gobert, and Derrick Favors. It’s likely that two of those three will be max players in their next contract. Thankfully, Dennis Lindsey has managed the cap so that the team has the space to accommodate that. Thank you to BasketballInsiders.com for this data.