Utah Jazz report cards: Ricky Rubio and the PGs at the quarter point
By Ryan Aston
The Utah Jazz have players struggling up and down the roster, but play at the point guard spot with Ricky Rubio and Dante Exum has been particularly rough at times.
Entering the 2018-19 season, there was a lot of hope (and hype) about what the Utah Jazz could get out of their point guard position. And, really, it’s not hard to see why.
Over the final months of last season, Ricky Rubio was one of the 10 best floor generals league-wide. His production reached new heights and, in many ways, he became the beating heart (on and off the floor) of one of the Association’s gutsiest groups.
Where else could he go in the new year but further along an upward trajectory?
Meanwhile, Dante Exum finally had an offseason that wasn’t focused on rehabbing some catastrophic injury or another. He was all set to build off a strong finish to an abbreviated ’17-18 season and show the world why the Jazz weren’t wrong to draft him at No. 5 overall.
However, at the quarter point of the ’18-19 campaign, a point guard position that was expected to generate more production than it has since Deron Williams was rolling hard has looked more like an Achilles heel in a multitude of games.
In a word, things have been bad. Like…real bad.
On the flip side, there have also been some encouraging performances spattered among the litany of less than stellar efforts.
So, on the whole, how do we grade Jazz point guards on an individual level? Here are my appraisals on Rubio, Exum and Raul Neto for the first quarter of the season…