The Utah Jazz have seen Keyonte George get better and better as the season has gone on. He's not playing winning basketball just yet, but he's much better in February than he was in November. He's hitting more of his shots, he's making good passes, and he's a good offensive presence. He's awful on defense, but he is trying, which is more than we can say about other guys on the squad.
The truth is, most other years George would be a Rookie of the Year candidate. He likely wouldn't' win it but he'd be in the running for it. With how well Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama have been playing, George would be lucky to finish in the Top 5, let alone win the award.
George's quick correction and improvement this season has been one of the better spots this season, especially as the team has gone into soft-tank mode. It turns out the correction and improvement on some things can be attributed to how he looked in the offseason. While some rookies would get ready by relaxing or disconnecting, George went full bore into film studies.
According to Krysten Peek of Yahoo! Sports, George started watching every game the Utah Jazz played in the 2022-2023 season, diving in face-first into the tape not long after being drafted. George spoke about this to Yahoo! Sports, saying;
"I watched as much film as I could just so I knew what my role was going to be coming in. I knew Mike was gone, so I just had to go into a new situation, trying to be a lead guard, and I was trying to speed up the process. My main goal was to be effective as soon as possible so I wanted to put myself in a position to be knowledgeable and not think about what I was doing in a new system and just play."
George has a lot to prove still, especially with his ability to generate offense, and getting ahead of ball-handlers on defense, but of all three Jazz rookies from his class, he may have the highest upside and apparently, we may now know why.