Simone Fontecchio shows his value as a scorer by not playing

Simone Fontecchio, the Utah Jazz forward, was pulled from the game against Lithuania.

Team Italy found out the hard way just how important Simone Fontecchio is to their team. Suffering from an undisclosed illness, the Italian team pulled their leading scorer and overall best player from their classification game against Latvia. Unsurprisingly, Latvia defeated Italy 87-82.

The Italians ended up in the classification game after losing to the United States in the quarter-finals and will play one more game against Luka Doncic and the Slovenians, themselves having been eliminated in the quarter-finals by Team Canada, and having lost their first Classification Game to Lithuania.

While the Italians were resilient without the ill Fontecchio, they weren’t up for the challenge. They couldn’t keep Andrejs Grazulis in check, and while Luigi Datome stepped up big, they didn’t have a second major scorer to back him up. Fontecchio’s absence hindered the Italians’ offense.

His offense has been his biggest asset all tournament long, and not having his three-point shooting to help the Italians overcome the Latvians, doomed the Italians. The Latvians shot much better from three, and that was ultimately the deciding factor.

A point should also be made that while Fontecchio has been known for his offense, he hustles on defense and often posts a positive BPM (box plus-minus) no matter the outcome. In fact, outside of the loss to the United States, Fontecchio hasn’t posted a negative BPM all tournament.

We’ve known since the start of the tournament that Fontecchio was important to the cause of Team Italy, but we didn’t know just how important he’d end up being. If Fontecchio played, there’s a very good chance that Latvia can’t keep up with the Italians.

After all, the Italians are usually one of the eight best national teams in the world at any given time, and watching them struggle to keep pace with a team like the Latvians, who for all accounts over-achieved, is a huge indication of how good Fontecchio can actually be for a team.

Does this mean that the Utah Jazz should give him minutes? Not necessarily. He’s got to earn them, same as anyone else, but it is a sign that he does make teams better and if the Utah Jazz have been paying attention, then they’ll keep that in mind going forward.