Thursday, July 2, 2009

Jazz Summer League

Eric Maynor has signed his rookie contract with the Jazz, paying him $1.3 million for his first NBA season. He’ll join several others on the Utah Jazz Summer League team which starts next week in Orlando, Florida. Of those who’ll join Maynor from the Jazz in Summer League are Kosta Koufos and Goran Suton. Kyrylo Fesenko won’t make the trip to Florida because he’ll be choosing to participate instead with the Ukrainian national team in Europe. Morris Almond, former Jazzman, will play for the New York Knicks in Summer League.

Those players who’ll be playing for the Jazz this summer are:

James Augustine, Cedric Bozeman, Justin Reed, Gary Wilkinson, Kevin Kruger, Andre Ingram, Kevin Lyde, Jim Baron, Josh Duncan, Wes Matthews, Reyshawn Terry, Larry Turner and Derrick Brown (from the Bobcats).

Augustine, Reed and Bozeman are interesting players because they’ve had small stints playing in the NBA. Augustine played for a couple years with Orlando, and now plays overseas for Gran Canaria in Spain. Reed played for Boston and Minnesota for a few years after falling to the D-League. Lastly, Bozeman played briefly for Atlanta, and now plays as a D-League Superstar, posting Magic-like stats. Go D-League Star!

Wilkinson is local (Bingham Miner & Utah State Aggie), and everybody knows about Kevin Kruger (former UNLV point guard, played for Utah Flash). Josh Duncan and Reyshawn Terry are pretty talented players, while Kevin Lyde is the perennial Jazz Summer League stat-stuffer. Of the rookies who might actually have an shot at making the team… Watch for 6-5 guard, Wes Matthews from Marquette. He could have a chance to impress, after a solid senior year (18 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 47% FG). His Pops once played as a back-up for the Showtime Lakers.

After doing a little research, I can see why the Jazz decided to draft Goran Suton in the 2nd Round. Suton absolutely flourished (and at times, dominated) during the NCAA tournament. He was the primary reason for Michigan State’s run to the championship game… doing it against some impressive competition along the way. Against Robert Morris, Suton scored 11 pts and collected 17 rebounds. He shut down Taj Gibson from USC in game 2 (3 pts, 0 rbs), while scoring 7 pts and 10 boards. He then had his best performance of all against Cole Aldrich of Kansas (20 pts, 9 rbs, & 5 steals). Michigan State advanced, and then beat #1 seeded Louisville behind Suton’s extraordinary game of 19 pts, 10 boards and 4 assists. Against UConn in the Final Four, Suton wasn’t quite the same spectacle, but he came back to post a solid game versus UNC in the championship game… matching Psycho-T stride for stride with 17 points, 11 rebounds and 2 blocks. Sparty got blasted… but Suton was very impressive. So, in this light, I can see why we drafted him. Let’s hope that he can continue his fabulous tournament play into Jazz Summer League, and eventually make the team.

2 comments:

Orlando said...

Suton had a great tourney. I was very impressed by him. I thought at the time that he dominated only because he was so big, an advantage that he won't have in the NBA.

Hopefully he'll turn out to have some NBA-worthy skills.

Orlando said...

Great post, Guru. Are there any point guards on the team that the Jazz might consider, or is Ronnie Price the guy?