Keyonte George is too good* for the Utah Jazz

The third-year guard is making a leap... sort of

There’s little more exciting for a rebuilding franchise than having a young player show pop where little existed before.

Keyonte George was drafted with the 16th pick of the 2023 NBA draft. First-round picks always carry expectations, but the truth is, players drafted in the teens rarely turn into anything extraordinary: 16th picks turn into All-Stars just 11% of the time, or about once a decade.

Few players looked as likely to live up to those meager expectations as George in his rookie season, in which he traded off miserable defensive possessions with terrible shot-taking. A more natural two-guard in his younger days, George struggled with the transition to NBA point guard. Because Utah was just starting a rebuild after the Donovan Mitchell/Rudy Gobert era, he was given plenty of leash to see what he could do, but the team’s general lack of talent and his own shortcomings as a player hardly set him up for success.

But while mid-draft guards on bad teams almost always struggle as rookies, ideally, they show signs of life as sophomores. Unfortunately, George’s second year was essentially more of the same.

Averaging nearly 17 points per game sounds cool, but not on 39% shooting from the field. There were a few encouraging signs, but George again was a “Welcome!” mat on defense and an offensive nontributor. Coach Will Hardy ran out of patience, yanking George from his starting spot for much of the year.

Andscape has a fun accounting of the “brutal” George/Hardy offseason exit interview after that season and George’s subsequent mental and physical overhaul. Motivated by both Hardy’s frankness and the looming offensive opportunities that would come with the Jazz turning over their roster, George admirably locked himself in the gym in preparation for a make-or-break third year.

So far, there’s been a lot more making than breaking.

Assume that every offensive stat I mention in this article is a career-best. George is averaging a whopping 24 points per game. He’s at a hair under seven assists, but even that undersells how much more fluent he’s become with his passing vocabulary. George has developed some nice two-man dialogue with center Jusuf Nurkic:

The processing time is a particularly noteworthy area of major improvement:

George’s point guard evolution has been fun to watch (though he still occasionally struggles with turnovers). But even more importantly, George has figured out how to score efficiently at the NBA level. He still doesn’t get to the rim often, but he’s getting deeper into the lane and converting on paint shots and floaters at a much higher rate:

And George’s three-point shotmaking is far more impressive than the pedestrian percentage (36%) would indicate, as he does plenty of his damage off the bounce:

George has mastered the dark arts of the free throw. He’s always been quick, but he’s added onion layers of canniness. You reach, he’ll teach:

Before last night’s game against the Nuggets, George had attempted double-digit freebies in four straight games, and he’s particularly adept at getting opponents to foul him behind the three-point line. Overall, his foul-drawing is in the 95th percentile positionally. This is a major development for a guy hitting 91% from the charity stripe.

Add it all up, and George is putting up numbers that would merit All-Star consideration if he were on a winning team. His improvements on offense have been substantial. Surprisingly, the Jazz are scoring at an above-median rate when George is on the floor.

And the team is notching wins, relatively speaking! They’re 10-18, and even when they lose, they usually put up a fight (although last night’s debacle in Denver was an unfortunately timed exception).

While it’s refreshing to see Utah being competitively mediocre instead of day-old roadkill, they’ve perhaps been too good for their own good. The Jazz owe a top-eight-protected pick to the Thunder (from a disastrously bad trade four years ago in which they attached the pick as a sweetener to get rid of Derrick Favors’ salary after finishing first in the West. Being cheap never pays, folks).

If they finish with the fourth-worst record or worse, they’re guaranteed to keep their pick this summer (since they can only fall four spots in the lottery). If they finish with the eighth-worst record, as they’re currently slated to do, things get realllll dangerous.

The Jazz, in other words, will be doing their damnedest to lose games going forward. And despite all outward appearances, that might mean an even higher dose of Keyonte George.

Because here’s the sneaky secret: For all George has been lauded offensively, and all the awesome improvements he’s made on that side of the ball, he’s seen virtually no gains on the other side.

You know how most people have that one weird recurring dream that presses on their anxiety button? For some, it’s their teeth falling out. For me, it’s opening up a locker in high school. I’m trying to get to class, but I can’t remember the combination. Classes change, the school day ends, faceless people stream past in an endless parade of ridicule and mockery, and I’m sitting there trying number after number in a forever-futile attempt to escape. I always wake up in a panic.

Watching George’s defensive film is a lot like that.

This stat blows my mind. The Jazz are a whopping nine points better on offense with George on the floor than off, a top-decile number. But they’re somehow 14 points worse on defense when he’s playing, which is a second-percentile figure.

In fact, George leads the pack in a lot of bad things. Estimated Plus/Minus says he’s in the first percentile as a defender, for the second year in a row. Bball-Index’s D-LEBRON says the same thing. There’s a real statistical argument to be had that the skinny George is the single worst defender in the NBA.

In other words, George is putting up crooked box score figures, but he isn’t exactly helping the Jazz win.

It’s technique. It’s effort. It’s everything. Sometimes, he just kind of forgets he’s playing basketball, like here, where he’s motionless, arms down, for a good three seconds:

This clip below would’ve been one of the lowlights of the century if Ja Morant’s shoe hadn’t saved the day. I’ve never seen a player crossed so hard that he starts coaching instead of playing. What does George think he’s doing?

Watch Paolo Banchero on the right side of the screen lazily swat George away like a not-particularly-pesky mosquito on this transition “defense” play:

Look, do I expect George to lock down star players? I do not. Is it reasonable to ask him to put up at least token resistance? It is.

People around the team, including Hardy, will tell you George takes defense more seriously and is trying harder. The Jazz are determined to forge him in fire, which won’t help him in the short term. He’s spent a weird amount of time guarding alpha scorers like Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic (?), and Cooper Flagg (?!) recently, almost regardless of position. I’m reminded of a decade ago, when the Heat knew they had something special in then-G-Leaguer Duncan Robinson, so they forced him to defend the opponent’s best player every single night. That way, when he was guarding the other team’s worst player in the big leagues, he wouldn’t drown.

It’s a good thought, but Robinson was still one of the least-capable defenders in the NBA. So far, the same can be said for George.

There are some ameliorating factors. Lineups with George and Walker Kessler, the Jazz’s mammoth goal-minder, defended at an above-median level this season before Kessler’s injury. Perhaps no team in the league has worse defensive talent around him than George on the Kessler-less Jazz, and for as good as Hardy’s been offensively, I’ve got questions about him as a defensive coach — the Jazz ranking 29th or 30th in transition defense for three straight years is almost impossible to do if it’s not purposeful.

(Sidenote: My questions surely don’t include, “Do you care?” Every Will Hardy story I hear makes him sound more and more like a Joe Mazzulla-level basketball psychopath. George, from the Andscape article: “Will calls me late at night and tells me little things like, ‘Play defense,’ and then he hangs up.” I love the idea of Hardy making two-second midnight phone calls just to yell at guys.)

And, of course, the Jazz haven’t been trying to win games. The easiest way to hit a bare minimum number of Ws in the NBA is to be competent defensively and hope to ride hot shooting nights. Utah, like most rebuilding teams, has decided it’s better to develop offensively and hope that a defensive foundation can be installed when it’s time to try (perhaps as soon as next season!).

The NBA has become a league where weaknesses matter as much as strengths. It’s impossible to imagine a future where George drives winning while playing defense like this.

But that is a problem for the future. Right now, George is showing legitimate upside as an offensive force without necessarily propelling the team to an undesirable win total. It’s a win-lose, in the most desirable sense of the term. (If the Jazz are determined to keep their pick, they might need to sit or trade Lauri Markkanen instead, who has been the focal point of the Jazz’s feistiest tendencies.)

I’ve spent a lot of words panning George, but I’m far more optimistic about his long-term future than I was three months ago. He just turned 22, and he’s been carrying a significant offensive and defensive burden. Efficient point generation is the most valuable skill in basketball, and George is showing he can be a legitimate scoring and playmaking engine. But I do worry. There are reasons construction companies start building from the floor up, not the ceiling down.

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Happy holidays, everyone! I will be off on Friday for family stuff, but look for something from me early next week as usual. And if you need another dose of Basketball Poetry, I went on RealGM Radio last week and gave some incendiary insights (I refuse to do hot takes) around Cade Cunningham, the ridiculous 2019 NBA draft, and more.

Check that conversation out on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.