After a very encouraging (if a bit uneven) second season with the Utah Jazz, there was a fair amount of excitement about Brice Sensabaugh. In his time as a Jazzman, he has flashed both his scoring and spacing ability. Year 3 in Utah hasn't been too kind for him, but Sensabaugh might just be turning his season around, as he made history with the Jazz in the first quarter of their game against the Chicago Bulls.
The NBA announced that Sensabaugh was the first Jazzman since Deron Williams to score over 20 points in the first quarter.
21 1Q points for Brice Sensabaugh 😤
— NBA (@NBA) January 15, 2026
He joins Deron Williams (2/27/2010) as the only @utahjazz players to drop 20+ points in a 1Q in the play-by-play era!
Tap to watch: https://t.co/WIunZcQYw4 pic.twitter.com/8X7WzSAlIp
Sensabaugh has shown that he can get hot in the past, but the Jazz have seen this kind of production from other players whose fatal flaw was that they could never find consistency, like Rodney Hood. Sensabaugh isn't the exact same player as Hood, but the inconsistency has been alarming nonetheless.
For the record, Sensabaugh has put together his best string of games in January, as, exluding what;s currently going on with the Bulls, he's averaging 14.3 points while shooting 46.3% from the field and 27% from three (this will likely change when tonight's game is over win or lose). So maybe these are the signs that he's getting it together.
This is the season to prove he's part of the future
Sensabaugh's ceiling likely isn't that of a star, but he has shown (only in spurts) that he has the makings of a complementary scorer and sharpshooter. It's why he's been compared to Bojan Bogdanovic and Georges Niang. This season, he's been worse than they were, which is not good timing, since this is a season when Utah is throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
If Sensabaugh can't put things together, that definitely casts doubt on what exactly his future is with the Jazz. This team might be young, but it has every intention of going for the playoffs next season, and if he can't hold his own, he's as good as gone as the Jazz will look for someone who can.
All in all, it's a positive development to see Sensabaugh go off, but he needs to be consistent. No, no one's asking him to score 20 points a quarter, but what fans want to see is Sensabaugh start to find himself. It can be hard to do that on a team that currently has no intention to win anything, but the right guys figure it out.