Utah Jazz vs Denver Nuggets

Keyonte George plays basketball tonight, and so does the Utah Jazz summer league team. The Jazz play Denver tonight in Vegas, luckily Nikola Jokic is in Serbia, Jamal Murray is in Canada, they can’t hurt us tonight. We get to watch our development team continue to move through Vegas while getting better, Jazz are 2-0 so far in Vegas. The focus is still on development over wins, it’s nice when we can get both. Ultimately it’s the Keyonte George show, he’s by far the brightest star on our summer league team.

Players to watch on both teams:

Keyonte George (no explanation necessary)

Johnny Juzang (2nd year guard is showing signs of a good scorer)

Joey Hauser (Jazz gave Joey a 2 way contract, he hasn’t played well yet but the shot is nice)

Collin Gillespie (2nd year guard out of Villanova on Denver is a fun player to watch)

Julian Strawther (He hasn’t played a lot for the Nuggets this summer but his shooting is pretty special. He also hit a game winner against BYU while at Gonzaga)

Peyton Watson (Dunk specialist)

Keyonte in 2 games is averaging 29.5 PPG, 8.5 APG, 1.5 SPG, and shooting 54/44/60. These are excellent numbers for summer league, these would be awesome for someone picked in the top 5. Being picked #16 and playing like this really reminds me of a guy named Donovan Mitchell who was the #13 pick back in 2017. There’s still room for improvement, that’s why he’s still playing. Keyonte has been buns on defense, the 1.5 steals per game don’t show that he has a long way to go on that side of the ball. These last few summer league games will be important for him to play harder on that end so that Will Hardy is willing to trust him with regular rotation minutes. Would also love to see his free throw percentage change, that one certainly feels like an anomaly, he’s great at getting to the free throw line but for some reason is only shooting 60% on those attempts, I’m sure those will change as time goes on.

Photo by Bart Young/NBAE via Getty Images

WHAT – UTAH JAZZ VS DENVER NUGGETS IN SUMMER LEAGUE

WHEN – 7/12 @ 7:30

HOW – NBA TV