We’re ranking the five Utah Jazz players who went over to play in the FIBA World Cup.
The first two rounds are over, but how did the Utah Jazz’s FIBA Five do compared to one another?
The FIBA World Cup rolls on, and as of this writing only two men remain standing, Walker Kessler of Team USA and Kelly Olynyk of Team Canada. Both men have vastly different roles for their teams. Kessler is a bench player getting garbage minutes, while Olynyk is the team’s Swiss army knife, doing a little bit of everything.
Simone Fontecchio lost to Kessler and Team USA, and is now waiting for his final game of the tournament; a classification game to determine where Team Italy falls in the end-of-tournament rankings.
Jordan Clarkson and Lauri Markkanen have long been eliminated at this point, and are likely already back in their respective homes. They played just five games, as opposed to the six that everyone else from the Jazz played.
And because we’re looking at comparing them against one another, we’re only going to be comparing their first five games from the FIBA World Cup. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re only ranking the five players based on their first five games, and not any of the single-elimination tournament games the teams will be playing.
We’re also not going to compare them anymore going further, as the number of games and the level of importance differs wildly, and it’s not fair to compare Fontecchio’s last game against a possible showdown between Olynyk and Kessler in the finals.
So with that said, let’s see who came in dead last.