Utah Jazz: 3 reasons why Mike Conley will redeem himself
By Caleb Manser
Mike Conley and slow starts
Over the past two (now three) seasons the Jazz have established a common trend: they get off to a rough start but find their footing down the home-stretch of the regular season.
In 2017-18, there was a lot of adjustment of finding the leading scorer to replace Gordon Hayward as well as knee injuries to Rudy Gobert that cursed the Jazz early. Fortunately they found their Hayward replacement with rookie Donovan Mitchell and caught back up in the playoff picture.
In 2018-19, Donovan Mitchell had a foot injury lingering from the 2018 playoffs that affected his offseason training and early season’s play. In addition to that, the Jazz had a travel-heavy schedule in the opening months, where they basically lived in a hotel for a month.
In the past two seasons in which Conley played a decent amount, he’s gotten off to a slow start individually but finds a way to turn it around by the end of the 82 game marathon. Take a look at these numbers:
2018-19:
- 20.4 points on 41/34/81 shooting splits first 20 games.
- 21.4 points on 44/37/85 shooting splits the last 50 games
2017-18: only played in 12 games thanks to a season ending foot injury
2016-17:
- 17.9 points on 41/41/86 shooting splits the first 20 games
- 21.4 points on 47/40/85 shooting splits the last 49 games
So far in this 2019-20 season, the Utah Jazz have held up their end of the deal for coming on strong after a slow start. Their net rating has jumped to ninth in the NBA, and over the past ten games they own the second best net rating in the association.
Now it’s Conley’s turn to turn some heads in this stretch run. When he returns to the court, it will be his 23rd game of the season which falls right in line with when he turned it around the previous two seasons.