Despite injuries to Ricky Rubio and Dante Exum, the Utah Jazz may just be alright at the point guard spot with Raul Neto directing the attack.
While the Utah Jazz received encouraging results on Ricky Rubio‘s MRI on Tuesday, they remain in something of a point guard quandary. Rubio is still expected to miss a couple of weeks with a hamstring injury, while back-up Dante Exum has a similar timetable for his injured ankle.
My advice to Jazz fans — don’t panic! Raul Neto has got this on lockdown. He may often be the forgotten man in Coach Quin Snyder’s backcourt rotation, but when Neto has been given run, he’s taken advantage of the opportunity as well as anyone can.
He did it when Rubio went down against the Milwaukee Bucks, putting up 10 points, six rebounds and five assists in 29 minutes. And, really, he’s done it all year long in spot duty. If you break his numbers down per 36 minutes, Neto is averaging 15 points, six dimes and five boards this season.
Simply put, good things have happened when Neto has played.
He takes the notion of not making things worse that seems to be the best wish people have for deep bench players and turns it on its head. He actually has a quantifiable positive impact on games. Neto’s net rating of 4.2 equals that of Rudy Gobert and is actually better than Donovan Mitchell‘s number.
He may not hit all of these numbers dead-on in a suddenly increased role where he’ll face the opponent’s front-line talent on a nightly basis, but he’ll undoubtedly find a way to contribute with the first team.
He’s done it before, after all.
As a rookie who had been expected to spend a lot of his time either riding the pine or in the developmental league, Neto started 53 games in relief of an injured Exum, beating out Trey Burke in the process. He averaged six points and three assists in those games and was one of the team’s better deep threats, hitting 40 percent of his triples.
Raul Neto: "When you’re not playing, you want to play. How I got the opportunity is, of course, not the way I wanted; I didn’t want all of my teammates to get injured and then me get minutes. It is what it is, and I have to be ready, so it feels good to be out there playing." pic.twitter.com/TfPtFdJnOo
— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) January 9, 2019
He did that as wide-eyed rookie; this time around he’s a seasoned vet. He doesn’t have to hold down the fort for 50-plus games, either. A couple of weeks will suffice, during which the Jazz play an overwhelmingly home-heavy schedule that includes games against multiple lottery teams.
And he continues to be a high-level floor-spacer, hitting 41 percent from behind the arc. That’s an offensive aspect that Rubio and Exum don’t even provide consistently.
Does he have his limitations? Sure, but he’s more than capable of helping to keep the Jazz in the hunt while his teammates heal up. I, for one, expect him to do just that.