2 Utah Jazz players dominated the FIBA World Cup in scoring

The Utah Jazz saw two of their own explode during the FIBA World Cup.

The Utah Jazz has been lucky so far to go through the first few weeks of the FIBA World Cup tournament without losing anyone to injury. That’s first and foremost the most impressive thing, with sending five guys over you’re not exactly sure who will stay healthy, if anyone will. But luckily the Jazz found out their players are resilient.

More importantly, the Jazz found out their players are super skilled. In fact, two of them, Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson, finished the first five games of the tournament ranked #2 and #3 respectively. Clarkson, who played for the Philippines, averaged 26 points per game while shooting a respectable 41.1%

Markkanen wasn’t too far behind, finishing with 24.8 points per game, on over 50% shooting from the floor. Sure, both he and Clarkson didn’t shoot well from three, only one player in the Top 10 in scoring during the tournament even shot over 40%.

Markkanen and Clarkson barely lost out on being number one due to the Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic playing for his home country of Slovenia. Doncic finished the first five games with an average of 26.4 points per game.

Simone Fontecchio, another Jazz player, finished tied for #16 alongside Bogdan Bogdanovic. Fontecchio averaged 18.4 points over the first five games and shot just about 43% from the floor.

Now, while it’s impressive that Markkanen and Clarkson averaged as many points as they did, Doncic is going to the quarter-finals and won more games than Markkanen and Clarkson combined (4 to 3).

The reason for this is that Markkanen and Clarkson played on bad teams, forcing both men to shoot the ball far more often than they really should have. Look at Fontecchio, a player not on Markkanen or Clarkson’s level (at least not yet), and he won the same number of games as Doncic but averaged nearly eight points less than Clarkson.

That’s because Italy is a more well-balanced team and while Fontecchio is the star of his team, same as Markkanen and Clarkson, he doesn’t have to do it all on his own.

That said, it’s nothing to shake a stick at, landing in the top three of scoring of the FIBA World Cup tournament. With both men looking to prove their value to the Jazz this year and beyond, strong shooting performance and a high-scoring output during the tournament can only help them in the long run.