Los Angeles • Getting new players integrated in the middle of the season, and especially over the week of Christmas, is a challenge for any team.
The Jazz are doing their best, though, with Jordan Clarkson and Rayjon Tucker, the new additions added to the team Monday, who didn’t really get to work until Thursday. That’s when the two players completed their physicals, and while a shootaround helped, it lasted only about an hour.
So it was really left for Saturday’s team practice to start Clarkson and Tucker’s integration process. After practice, Clarkson and Tucker could be seen working with Jazz coaches, running through the different reads and options from the top of the Jazz’s playbook.
The players themselves get iPads to review the playbook: Even if someone is acquired in the middle of a road trip, as Kyle Korver was last year, these are ready to go. Then, Korver said he knew “about 25%” of what was going on in his first game with the team.
But Jazz coaches have been impressed with Clarkson’s excitement about integrating in with his new team.
“He’s got an enthusiasm about him, you can tell he really loves to play,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “I want to coach him hard, help him get better, and he can help us get better. Anytime you’ve got a player that loves to play, wants to work and they’re talented, that’s a good, good thing for the coaching staff and for his teammates.”
That’s partially due to his skillset, which Snyder thinks Clarkson can expand beyond his reputation as a volume scorer.
“You see some things fundamentally in him defensively that are important to him,” Snyder said. “He switched onto big guys rolling in pick and roll, and really worked hard on getting into their legs, getting them off the boards. He’s chasing people in screening actions.”
Tucker is less likely to play right away — coming out of the G League as a 22-year-old, he’s not as developed as players ahead of him on the roster. Still, there are things that the Jazz organization is excited about, in particular, his NBA athleticism and his ability to draw fouls at the G League level.
But the truth is that Tucker, and the rest of the six Jazz rookies on the roster, aren’t likely to play as big a role in the NBA as they do in their G League experience. So how can players adapt?
“There’s not a lot of guys that average 30 (in the G League) that come up and average 30 in the NBA. But I think the way guys get on the floor is to defend,” Snyder emphasized. “I mean, that’s been what we believe in. And when you’re out there and you can guard, you’ve got a better chance of staying out there. You might hit a couple of buckets and might score 30 someday.”
Clippers coach Doc Rivers has been through that process frequently. He’s elevated G League players such as Tyrone Wallace and Sindarius Thornwell into spot starters on his team, though those players have since moved on. The challenge, he says, is to manage expectations: “I think a lot of young guys are still looking at what they want to be, instead of what they can be now.”
But there are upsides to that desire: “Guys like that, especially out of the G League, are so hungry,” Rivers said. “They just want to play the role that the coach tells them to play. They play hard, they play a role and they’re happy to be there.
“And then we find out they can play,” he laughed. “They show you more and then you start giving them more.”
With a bench in need, the Jazz certainly hope that’s the case for their group of newbies.
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