After three years with the Utah Jazz, point guard Trey Burke gets to hit the reset button on his NBA career after being traded to the Washington Wizards.
Growing up is hard to do–especially when you’re a young NBA team in a community where you’re the only game in town; a market where hard-working players are treated like members of the family. Sometimes that growth comes at the expense of those who have been embraced by the fanbase; players who are “good guys.”
Guys like DeMarre Carroll, Jeremy Evans and Trevor Booker, who were allowed to pack their bags and set out for new homes as part of that growing process.
In the second time in as many days, the Utah Jazz bid adieu to one such player to make room for the pieces will take the franchise to the next level in its pursuit of a return to prominence in the Western Conference.
The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Sunday that the Jazz have agreed to send point guard Trey Burke to the Washington Wizards in exchange for a future second round pick.
The team had been shopping Burke for some time, most notably before last February’s trade deadline when it was reported that the Jazz and Houston Rockets were discussing a potential deal centered around Burke and Ty Lawson.
Now, like Booker, who is set to ink a free agent deal with the Brooklyn Nets in the coming days, Burke is headed to the East Coast.
Burke came to the Jazz with a high level of fanfare as a top ten pick and John R. Wooden Award winner in 2013. However, the former Michigan standout lost his starting spot to Dante Exum during the 2014-15 season, then fell out of the rotation entirely after the team acquired Shelvin Mack last season.
By all accounts, Burke remained the consummate professional throughout his up-and-down tenure with the team. Although he was never quite embraced by the current coaching staff as he was under Tyrone Corbin, the point guard remained ready to play and never openly complained about his role.
Still, he failed to shoot or defend consistently during his time as a Jazzman, hitting only 38 percent of his career field goal attempts while struggling to hold his own against the bigger, more athletic guards in the league.
Despite the way his Jazz career ended, Burke was thankful for his experience in Utah and for the way he was embraced by Jazz fans. After the trade was reported, he took to Instagram with kind words for the team that drafted him and its supporters–
Next: Thanks for Everything, Trevor Booker
The second round pick accquired by Utah in exchange for Burke will be conveyed to the Jazz in 2021. Following the trade, the Jazz have four point guards in the fold in Exum, Mack, George Hill and Raul Neto, in addition to holding the draft rights to point guards Tyrone Wallace, Marcus Paige and Olivier Hanlan.