Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 114-103 loss to the Golden State Warriors from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Collin Sexton thoughts
Collin Sexton deserves to play on a good team.
Look, he’s not a perfect player. He’s small. He’s not an impact player off the ball defensively. He’s a better scorer than playmaker. I don’t think he elevates a team on his own.
But I think tonight showed some of the best of what he can be, too. He put up 30 points on 12-19 shooting — terrific efficiency. He had four assists, and took care of the ball, just one turnover.
And in general, he showed just ridiculous verve given the fact he was playing on the second night of a back to back, with a team that was sitting seven players. His teammates are about half as talented as him — he’s gotta play with two undrafted players and two end-of-first-round youngsters in this starting lineup. They are, famously, trying very hard to lose. He was playing against a team that sat its own stars, including Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Jonathan Kuminga.
With two minutes left to go, and the game largely out of reach, Sexton ripped the ball out of a driving Warrior’s hands, screamed to the crowd after, then was so antsy on the jump ball that the refs had to intervene a couple of times. The man is a broken human being in the best possible way — I truly believe that he is the most competitive player in the NBA in a league filled with insanely competitive humans.
What’s his ideal role on a championship team? Honestly, it’s probably off the bench as a dangerous scorer who changes the energy of the game. In the starting lineup, he’s probably taking possessions away from a top, top player on a great team. Off the bench, and sprinkling in finishing lineups... I think he can be perfect.
But I think you can scale that role up as the quality of the team that acquires him goes down. Kevin O’Connor floated a trade sending him to the Kings today, and I think he makes some sense starting for them. We’ve floated a Detroit trade before, I think he’s a better player than Tim Hardaway Jr. And so on.
I’ll miss watching Sexton for 82 games if he’s traded... he’s been a delight. He just deserves to put his competitive spirit to use for a competitive team.
2. How good of a prospect is Cooper Flagg?
The Jazz are tanking in large part because of the promise of the top of this year’s draft. There are, to be sure, some pretty good consolation prizes: Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey. Baylor’s VJ Edgecombe just showed out in a huge way against BYU and Utah, he might be the No. 4 pick right now.
But Cooper Flagg is the prize. He’s played 20 games with Duke this season. Here’s his game log, from Basketball Reference:
There were some early season worries as he struggled offensively in some games, including a loss to Kansas. But uh, his last month and change has been pretty bonkers. The consistency is pretty incredible — even that 13-point game against Miami was because they won that game by 30+.
It’s not just the scoring that’s impressive, though. It’s the rebounding, the assisting, the minute load, the defense. He appears to be a truly all-around player that has really high level offensive upside.
The crazy thing is that he just barely turned 18 one month ago; because he reclassified, he’s a full year younger than even most college freshmen. And he is already either the best or second best player in college basketball, playing against guys who are largely four years older.
So, question: where does he rank — as a prospect — against the other players who have recently been drafted No. 1? He’s clearly better than anyone last year, but worse than Victor Wembanyama as a prospect. How does he match up against, say, Paolo Banchero? Anthony Edwards? Karl-Anthony Towns? Or Zion Williamson?
I tend to agree with The Athletic’s draft expert Sam Vecenie — I think he’s even a better prospect than Zion Williamson was then (who, it’s easy to forget now, was incredible in his one season at Duke). I’d also take his level of play in college to be higher than Banchero or Edwards; Towns was pretty great too.
In other words, I think Flagg is an extremely worthy tank target. If this works out, and the Jazz get lucky, they’ll be well positioned for years to come.
3. Hotels and doctors
Look, there wasn’t a whole lot to say about this game, so we’re going to make two small notes here of things I thought were interesting but probably aren’t enough to carry their own points.
First: I asked Doc Rivers what he thought about tanking on Monday — he has his own experience tanking with a Danny Ainge franchise, so his perspective is valuable. Here’s what he said:
“Don’t get me started, man. I was having a good day until you asked that question,” he said. Sorry, Doc.
“I don’t know the answer honestly, because I’ve been on teams that — I’m not gonna say ‘tanking’, but... you know. It’s hard. It’s hard for coaches. I’ve always complained for coaching sake is that it goes on your record. I had three years of it, and that stays with your record. So when they fire you and you go to the other team, I think it should transfer to the team that fired you. You shouldn’t get that record. You took a hit for ‘em, know what I mean? But it’s tough, man, like you got to build, you got to build through the draft, you got to hope to get free agents, and it’s hard."
It’s a good point. I think Will Hardy is a pretty good coach, and his coaching record is going to look pretty darn abysmal over these three years through very little fault of his own.
Second: nearly every road NBA team that comes through Utah stays at the Grand America Hotel. It’s just what’s been done for decades now, and I’ve heard players tend to like it quite a bit.
But the Milwaukee Bucks did something new on Monday. According to Bucks beat writers, the team stayed at the new Asher Adams hotel, the one just across the street from the Delta Center in the old Union Pacific building.
The Bucks writer I spoke to had good reviews of the place, though. Is this going to be a trend? Or is it just a one-off? I’ll be curious!
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