Redux: Can Trey Burke And Dante Exum Coexist?

Feb 13, 2015; New York, NY, USA; U.S. Team guard Trey Burke of the Utah Jazz (3) shoots the basketball against World Team guard Dante Exum of the Utah Jazz (11) during the first half at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

It happened instantaneously when Dante Exum was drafted last June, 2014 by the Utah Jazz. Speculation that Trey Burke was immediately expendable ran rampant on social media, in turn causing media, local and national, to begin a line of questioning that would persist for untold weeks. Media, after all, talks about what fans are talking about, naturally.

Burke welcomed the Exum pick right away, leading the line of tireless questioning to Quin Snyder — who had yet to coach an NBA game as the lone lead man — of whether or not Trey Burke and Dante Exum could coexist.

Individually, Trey Burke and Dante Exum combined for only 31.6% from three…put ‘em out there as a duo and that three-point average rises to a solid 35.4%

The question persisted throughout the season, almost nightly. It happened so often that Snyder would crack wise when it didn’t come in as timely a fashion as he suspected it would. Nevertheless, he fielded it and answered it patiently time and again.

Starting the first 41 games he played in 2014-15, come January 22, Trey Burke was yanked from the starting line in favor of Dante Exum, who started the remaining 38 games at the point for Utah. But this isn’t about who starts and who finishes. This is examining whether or not the pair of polar opposite point guards can coexist.

Many suspected Trey Burke and Dante Exum could not, but the numbers seem to indicate otherwise.

Burke and Exum shared the court for 53 of the Jazz’s 82 games, 364 minutes in all — quite a lot for a tandem playing the same position. Then again, many NBA teams field more than ball-handling guard. I use the term “ball-handling guard” because the transition from the “pure” point guard to combo-guards is ever more common, almost complete.

Coaches like to have options, and guys that aren’t pigeonholed by a label create more options for their teammates. The “pure” point guard of yore may have retired for the foreseeable future with Steve Nash. Meanwhile, Rajon Rondo is suddenly a dinosaur.

More from The J-Notes

"Most everything changes with time. The NBA is no exception — this is just how the world works. In the past seven years, taking us back to when Rajon Rondo won a title with the Boston Celtics, things have evolved to the point where the game looks and operates differently. The changes are impactful.How Rondo plays basketball is one thing that hasn’t changed.…the Mavericks are built in such a way that Rondo doesn’t have an obvious use if he’s not attacking and creating for others. And if he doesn’t have a use, he kills your spacing by just being on the floor.–Chris Manning, Hardwood Paroxysm, Rajon Rondo, the point guard the NBA left behind"

As for Trey Burke and Dante Exum, one began the season offensive-minded, the other defensive-minded. Ideally, they push each other to meet in the middle for the sake of the team, improving their weaknesses while honing each other’s strengths.

From the start of the 2014-15 season to the All-Star break, Trey Burke’s offensive rating was 104.1, his defensive rating a startling 108.5. In the same span, Dante Exum’s offensive rating was 102.2 with an identical defensive rating of 102.2.

From after the All-Star break on, Trey Burke’s offensive rating dropped to a still-respectable 99.7, but the real strides he made were on defense, finishing the final two months with an astonishing 94.4 defensive rating, a credit to Snyder and Burke, who ultimately had to put the work in and want to improve a glaring hole in his defensive game.

Dante Exum finished the last two months with a 102.5 offensive rating and a solid 94.3 defensive rating, often with a difficult assignment on an explosive Western Conference point guard trying to break him down.

It took 75 games, but the teenage Aussie dynamo finally broke out of his shell on offense with a breakout performance to open the last two weeks of his rookie campaign, exploding for 12 assists, finding he could blow by guys like Ty Lawson and Damian Lillard after all.