In the wake of Dante Exum’s potentially season-ending injury, the Utah Jazz need someone to step up and fill the void at the backup point guard position. Raul Neto could be the player to do so.
It took just three games for injuries to once again take the breath away from Jazz fans and the future away from players. Dante Exum was injured in his third preseason game against the Phoenix Suns and at this stage, a return to the court in the 2017-18 NBA season looks unlikely.
Fortunately, the Jazz are already familiar with the next-man-up mentality needed to get past this seemingly endless string of injuries. As Quin Snyder so eloquently put it after Gordon Hayward’s departure, “adversity is opportunity in disguise”. And the same thing holds true with the injury to Dante Exum.
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After starting in 53 games in his rookie season, Neto almost lost his spot in the rotation entirely last year as he was scrapping for backup minutes with Exum and Shelvin Mack. But now he finds himself at the forefront of the second unit as one of two healthy point guards on Utah’s roster.
Immediately after Exum’s injury, with Alec Burks enjoying a stellar preseason and Donovan Mitchell continuing to show flashes, it looked as though Neto may still be riding the pine once again this year.
However, since Jonas Jerebko seemed to fall out of the rotation as the preseason progressed, allowing Burks to play more with the trickle down effect, and Quin Snyder’s recent comments about keeping Mitchell at shooting guard, there is hope for Neto after all.
Quin interesting comments about Donovan Mitchell and playing point guard on today coaches show https://t.co/uegSfBfdmb
— David Locke (@DLocke09) October 10, 2017
"“[Point guard] is a position that requires you to think on a lot of levels and think about a lot of people. I don’t want that to take away from [Mitchell’s] strengths, which is his ability to attack and to score.”"
Just from hearing that, I got the sense that perhaps Donovan Mitchell won’t be playing any point guard at all to start the season. Although, I don’t think that Quin Snyder’s system necessarily needs a true point guard on the court.
Snyder is preaching for the Jazz to play at a faster pace and so any one player can push the ball up the floor. In the half-court set, the Jazz run a lot of pick and rolls and a lot of motion around the perimeter that doesn’t really require the skills of a pass-first point guard. Where it does help to have a true point guard, however, is getting the big men in a position to score, which Neto may be able to do to a greater degree than Donovan Mitchell.
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If the Jazz were to get the old Derrick Favors back where he could create his own offense in the post, which truthfully is looking more unlikely by the day, then it releases a lot of the pressure on the point guard to make decisions and thus, Mitchell over Neto at point guard would make a lot more sense.
Unfortunately for Favors, that has yet to be the case. Nonetheless, Mitchell will still get his fair share of minutes while Neto plays the backup point guard role. And I’m excited to see what the Brazilian can do with consistent court-time.
Neto was quite impressive in his limited minutes during the preseason and from everything I’ve heard, he showed out in training camp and looked like a much improved player over last year. Something Neto brings that Exum doesn’t have at this stage of his young career is consistency; you know what you’re going to get from Raul Neto every single night.
He plays scrappy defense that fits the mold of the team, he fights for loose balls, he’s one of the best players in the NBA at forcing turnovers by pressing in the backcourt, and he plays really hard buzzer to buzzer.
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You can still expect to see Rubio for around 35 minutes a night but it looks as though Neto will be the support crew to start out the season. Be sure to tune in as the Jazz tip-off the new season on Wednesday night against the Denver Nuggets at Vivint Smart Home Arena.