SACRAMENTO — The Utah Jazz play the Sacramento Kings Wednesday night at the brand new Golden 1 Center. KSL.com spoke briefly to head coach Quin Snyder, Gordon Hayward, Dante Exum, and Alec Burks at the Jazz's morning shootaround.

Injury report

The injury report had a couple of new twists to report Wednesday morning.

Both point guards George Hill and Raul Neto were ruled out of the game against the Kings because of "right groin strains," according to the team. Both players shared nearly all of the point guard minutes on Monday against the Pelicans, but will be unavailable to play tonight.

That news was a definite surprise. I had noticed Hill tweaking his groin on Saturday against the Clippers, but when I asked Hill about the injury Monday, he said "I don't remember that", insisted he was fine, and made me doubt whether anything had happened at all. And of course, he came out and played well at home, scoring 17 points. For him to be out Wednesday means that something really did happen there.

And Neto is even more surprising, because he looked great in his point guard minutes Monday, even finishing the game.

With the playoffs coming up, some teams have been resting players at the slightest provocation, but Quin Snyder insisted that wasn't the case. "No, they're hurt," he said. "We're not playing games with executive decisions."

Gordon Hayward is still listed as questionable thanks to his quadriceps contusion that forced him to miss the game against New Orleans Monday. That being said, Hayward fully participated in shootaround, and sounded like a man who wanted to play.

"For me, I'm going to try to play no matter what," Hayward said. "With guys being out, it's up to everybody to pick it up, like we have all year." Jazz doctors cautioned Hayward, saying that they wanted to see how his leg responded to pregame warmups, but it sounds like he's going to play barring unexpected pain.

Derrick Favors is still out with his knee contusion that's saddled him since early March. Favors did not participate in shootaround, but did work on standstill shooting afterwards. No timeline for his return has been released by the Jazz, and frankly, I'm not sure they know of one internally either.

Lineup mix and match

Snyder said the team hadn't yet decided on who was going to start at the point guard in Hill's place, between Dante Exum or Shelvin Mack.

If Exum starts, he'll be playing with better scorers than himself, so he says he wants to facilitate more than he usually does coming off the bench.

"Obviously, I want to get Gordon involved as much as possible, get Rudy involved," Exum said. "It's kind of a different role, but I'm still trying to push the ball and play great defense."

Joe Ingles threw his hat in, saying he wanted to play point guard too, but Exum squashed that idea.

"There's not a depth chart. It's not like football, where there's a QB1 and a QB2, that's not how it works," Snyder said. "It has much more to do with other factors."

That means we may see another starting lineup against the Kings. The Jazz have started 12 different players this year among 22 different starting lineups. Does that mean those units that haven't played together struggle on the floor, as Monday's starting lineup did?

"One of the things about the way that we play is that we have more cohesion than you would sometimes anticipate, because guys can compliment each other within a loose system," Snyder said.

"The biggest thing is that you lack productivity. When Rodney Hood's out, that's like 20 points on a given night."

Alec Burks' baby

Alec Burks' girlfriend had a baby Monday, which is why he wasn't with the team. He's back with the Jazz in Sacramento, though.

They haven't decided on a name yet, but Burks says that he's just calling her "female AB" right now.

"If you've never seen a child being born before, it's a crazy experience," Burks said.

"It's going to be fun. She's going to dress just as swaggy as me."

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