Grayson Allen hasn’t changed and Jazz fans don’t care

It didn’t take long for Grayson Allen to attract attention to himself for his on-court antics. In the third quarter of his second Summer League game he was guarding Atlanta Hawks guard, Trae Young. Then this happened.

This is the guy Dennis Lindsey brought in. Someone that is an underdog willing to play scrappy and not back down from anyone. Don’t forget that the person Allen was guarding was the fifth overall pick in the draft, a guy used to getting his way in every situation. And Allen wasn’t having it.

Even after Young got the better of him in the initial scuffle by throwing him off, Allen didn’t give up. Instead he gave him a solid shove with his shoulder.

Play like this has already shifted the minds of less enthusiastic fans. Utah’s Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox sent out a tweet pleading with the Jazz to not take the former Duke guard, but is singing a much different tune.

That particular play went viral and Utah’s resident trash-talking and getting-under-opponent’s-skin expert Joe Ingles took notice.

Something tells me Joe Ingles has found a pupil.

Allen’s play outside of that kerfuffle is almost as interesting. When Lindsey brought him in, I assumed his role was going to be that of a spot-up shooter (which is probably still true). However, he hasn’t really been that in the two game so far of Summer League.

Instead of being a shooter and little else, Allen has been everything but a shooter. In two games he has shot 6-29 and 2-8 from three. On the other hand, he’s racked up 15 assists (just five turnovers), 14 rebounds and four steals. His per 36 stat line so far is 16.7 points, 12.6 assists, 11.7 rebounds and 3.3 steals.

It was clear to me that Allen had these skills in his repertoire at Duke, it’s just strange to see them at the forefront of his play and to see him being used as a distributor as much as a shooter.

In recent days, the Jazz have been busy re-signing core pieces of last year’s team. The two most notable ones have been Dante Exum and Derrick Favors. Exum got a three-year $33 million deal while Favors took a two-year $36 million contract.

One fan wasn’t exactly happy that those two players will be taking up nearly $30 million alone in cap space this upcoming season and decided to let Favors know exactly how he felt.

The person deleted the tweet and just in case the embed doesn’t show what it said, I’ll tell you. It read: “Too bad we won’t have a bench thanks to you and Exum sucking up 29 mil. Oh well.”

Normally, responding to random trolls is beneath most athletes. This time, however, Favors prepared an eloquent response becoming of his maturity and status as the longest-tenure member of the Utah Jazz roster.

So while Favors took the short route, I’ll take the long one (especially since I get more than 280 characters). Had the Jazz actually sacrificed players on the bench to bring Favors back, maybe I’d understand and at least respect the man for a potentially legitimate gripe. But the Jazz have no shortage of depth.

Utah is bringing back a rotation that goes 11 men deep, with most of them capable of playing 15-20 quality minutes on just about any NBA roster. There are almost zero teams in the league right now that can say that about their roster.

Apparently, Rudy Gobert is becoming popular with the kids as tonight he had at least two interactions with little tykes that are probably less than one-third his height.

Maybe it’s just natural for a guy that makes grown men look like children out on the court.

A few media members caught up with Donovan Mitchell and asked him about crashing some 4th of July parties, which happened to come on the one-year anniversary of when Utah’s last star broke the souls of the fanbase.

Not sure I’ll ever have words to describe how much I love Mitchell right now.