The Utah Jazz have a star in Keyonte George. In a close one against the Dallas Mavericks that went to Overtime, Keyonte George led the Utah Jazz to victory over the Cooper Flagg-led Mavericks, 140-133.
Cooper Flagg will get the accolades for his 42-point outburst, but at the end of quarters, he really struggled and wasn’t good enough to overcome Keyonte George and Lauri Markkanen. Speaking of Lauri Markkanen and Keyonte George, they combined for 70 points.
Keyonte George is becoming one of the elite scorers in the NBA. His line tonight was 37 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds while shooting 55% from the field and 50% from three. He’s consistently putting up monster numbers, but it’s probably his poise at the end of games that’s the most impressive. If you put the ball in his hands in these games, you consistently see good things happen. He’s getting to the line at an elite level, and he’s also hitting his shots at a high level. On top of that, he’s assisting the ball at an incredible rate that forces the defense to be honest. Now, it might be difficult to keep this up against the best in the league, but he’s absolutely playing at high levels more and more consistently.
Lauri Markkanen is also playing at a high level. He scored 33 points in this one, shooting 47.8% from the floor and grabbing 16 rebounds. Weirdly, he’s still not shooting the ball consistently well from three, he’s now just shooting 35.2%, but his offensive game has rounded out well. What’s also clear is that the emergence of Keyonte George is helping him in a big way.
The other big story from this game was that the Jazz didn’t start Svi Mykhailiuk. I know that Will Hardy is probably going to be really sad about it, but the Jazz did not miss him, even a little. Brice Sensabaugh got the start and it didn’t change much of what Svi would have brought. I hope the Hardy and the front office took notice of what Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks brought to this game. Force-feeding vets only hurts the development of the young players and might have cost wins in the long run. Now, this is just one game, and Utah may crash back to reality in the future, but if Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks make a leap this year, then that’s incredibly valuable for the Jazz’s future. Playing Svi and Kevin Love does nothing for Utah and the future.
Speaking of Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks… Williams was a +15 in this one and absolutely changed the game in his time on the floor. This sequence from Williams brought the Jazz back from a deficit and gave them serious life.
We also got some significant development from Taylor Hendricks. Hendricks was 3/4 from three and grabbed 4 rebounds and 1 assist in 18 minutes. Hendricks needs to be getting more minutes to get the development he needs. Considering Hendricks missed an entire season to injury, not getting minutes over Kevin Love is terrible management. Let’s hope that Hendricks gets more minutes from here on out.
