Keyonte George scores 26 in Jazz win over Wolves

Keyonte George might be special.

Sorry, let me rephrase that.

Keyonte George is special.

In another fantastic performance, Keyonte George scored 26 points with 7 assists in the Utah Jazz win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. But he must have been chucking, right? Nope, he did it while shooting 9/15 (60%) from the field and 5/10 (50%) from three. He also grabbed 3 rebounds and 7 assists while we’re counting stats.

This level of offensive prowess for Keyonte George is getting pretty staggering. When you consider how he is doing this, it’s time to start getting excited as Jazz fans at what might be happening. George is showing almost no weaknesses offensively. As far as shooting, he’s showing an ability to score at all three levels, depending on what the defense is doing. He’s knocking down threes, whether pulling up or on a catch and shoot, he’s pulling up in the mid-range, and he’s scoring at the cup. On top of that, he’s drawing fouls when he goes to the basket because he’s not afraid of contact. What’s funny is George left some food on the table by only going 3/7 from the free throw line tonight. What’s more, he’s able to score at these three levels because he already has a tight handle and gets to where he wants on the court.

And that’s just the scoring, George has 17 assists in his last two games. And believe me, there’s been a lot of blown assists by guys not making their open threes after getting a pass from George. George is making the right reads and setting his teammates up for great shots. He’s also making every pass necessary. He’s making cross-court darts to an open corner three, he’s finding mismatches in the post with old-school entry passes, and he’s finding cutters driving to the basket. It’s truly a complete package we’re seeing. Oh, and he’s 19 years old.

(takes a deep breath)

Now, some would probably want to mention that Keyonte George is not playing well on the defensive end, and he looked like he was coasting a lot tonight. That’s definitely true, but something tells me that George might have been asked to take a rest day and he wants to stay out there. Think about it, including SLC Summer League, George has played 5 games in 8 days and traveled to Las Vegas from SLC. Oh, and remember, Ochai Agbaji didn’t play tonight. Why? rest. This is just a hunch but I bet the Jazz wanted to rest Keyonte George as well but George said he wants to win Las Vegas Summer League MVP, and that’s likely why he was out there, and coasting a bit on the defensive end.

Now, other players did play tonight. Colbey Ross has been playing nicely at the point while Micah Potter and Luka Samanic both had solid performances yet again. But the guy that deserves some real praise is Johnny Juzang who has been absolutely on fire shooting the ball the last three games. Tonight he scored 26 points on 10/14 (71.4%) shooting from the field and 4/5 (80%) from three. That type of shooting is always welcome and I’m sure the Jazz are interested in keeping Juzang within the organization. That may get tough though as the Jazz roster gets deeper and deeper. Other teams may keep calling.

All in all, it was a fun summer league game and I would personally like to take this moment to thank the Timberwolves for that #16 pick in the draft. Getting Keyonte George looks like it has created the replacement for Donovan Mitchell that the Jazz were looking for.