Utah Jazz Free Agent Target: Jeremy Lin
You wanna get crazy? Let’s get a little (L)insane!
Jeremy Lin is probably the highest-risk, highest-reward proposition in this article. His NBA career certainly reached higher heights than either Chalmers’ or Shumpert’s.
The year was 2011-12. The prefix “corona” was more readily associated with light beer than any infection. For a brief window, Jeremy Lin looked like one of the best players in the National Basketball Association.
Over the course of 12 starts for the New York Knicks, the undrafted, unknown Lin averaged 22.5 points and 8.7 assists per contest.
Whether Lin was the benefactor of the point guard whispering Mike D’Antoni, or just on a hot streak, we’ll never know. What we do know is that Lin would never reach those heights in his NBA career again.
Regardless, make no mistake: this is a very good basketball player. The last time we saw Lin in action, he averaged 13.3 points per 75 possessions as a member of the Toronto Raptors. That may not be All-Star caliber production, but Lin can probably still generate buckets at an NBA level.
He may get a chance to do so if the Jazz get desperate.
Realistically, Utah Jazz fans should hope not to see any of these faces in 2021-22. If they do, it probably means one or more of their key players is in the league’s Health and Safety Protocols. If necessary, however, any one of them could probably fill in on a short term basis.