With a vastly different roster from a season ago and a surplus of offensive creators, the Utah Jazz coaching staff are faced with a question — who is going to run the bench unit?
Last season, Joe Ingles and Derrick Favors were the two starters designated to come back in with the bench unit and run the show for the Utah Jazz. Now, with Favors’ departure to New Orleans and the additions of Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic to the starting five, Quin Snyder’s lineups have been jumbled right up.
Which Jazzmen will lead the way in 2019-20 is undoubtedly one of the biggest questions facing the team as the new campaign approaches.
Emmanuel Mudiay and Dante Exum have such a lack of experience in the reserve backcourt that it introduces the possibility of staggering Conley and Donovan Mitchell‘s minutes so at least one of them is on the court for the full 48 minutes.
Therefore, there’s chance that we see could either Conley or Mitchell as the primary ball handler for the entire game.
Another theory that’s gaining some traction in the public eye, and one that is being felt for by David Locke on the Locked On Jazz podcast recently, is letting Bogdanovic lead the bench unit. After the season-ending injury to Victor Oladipo, Bogey was first option for the Pacers offensively and appears more than capable of running a second unit.
If I had to guess what the rotation would look like on opening night, it would be a starting lineup of Conley, Mitchell, Ingles, Bogdanovic and Rudy Gobert. The first substitution would take Conley and Ingles to the bench for Mudiay and O’Neale, and they would later return when Mitchell, Bogdanovic and Gobert go to the bench.
Some people have even thrown around the possibility of starting Jeff Green at power forward to allow Ingles and Bogdanovic to play more with the bench unit, but I’m not sure this one is as likely as some other scenarios. I really can’t see Green playing more than 16 minutes a night on this team unless injuries put a serious dent in the rotation.
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My personal preference would be to roll out a starting lineup of Conley, Mitchell, Bogdanovic and Gobert, with Royce O’Neale starting at the four spot. This allows you to bring Ingles off the bench to control the second unit with the young backcourt of Mudiay and Exum.
Last season, we often saw the backup point guard responsibilities juggled between Mitchell and Ingles when Ricky Rubio was off the floor. That wouldn’t be surprising to see again this season as it also allows Mudiay and Exum to play off the ball, which may be preferable at this stage of their careers on a contending team.
Something I think we’ll see a lot of this season is Quin Snyder shuffling his lineups from game to game depending on the matchups and aiding in load management, in a similar fashion to how Nick Nurse managed the Toronto Raptors last year during the regular season.
With everything that’s transpired with the Jazz this offseason, it’s left so many uncertainties in terms of the rotation. The only things we truly know about the rotation at this point is that Conley and Mitchell will start in the backcourt with Gobert in at center. Apart from this, everything else seems as though it’s up in the air.
It will be interesting to see the lineups that Quin Snyder experiments with in the preseason so we get a gauge of what the rotation may look like on opening night. As for now, there are plenty of possibilities.