SALT LAKE CITY — After practice Saturday, Joe Ingles, Derrick Favors and head coach Quin Snyder spoke to the media.

A surprise appearance from Dante Exum

Dante Exum was at practice on Saturday, the first time we've seen him since his shoulder injury last Friday.

Obviously, everyone wants to know whether or not he's going to require surgery, and what his timeline is going to be, but it seems like it's legitimately still being decided. This isn't a case of the Jazz knowing something and not telling us, it appears.

Why do I think that? Well, first of all, the all-knowing Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN is giving reports like this:

And close friends like Ingles say that Exum doesn't know, either.

"We'll keep supporting him until he knows what he's going to do," Ingles said. "He doesn't really know what's happened or timelines or anything like that."

"Wherever this injury goes, he's ready to attack it," Snyder said. "Whatever decision is made, he's going to be as aggressive and committed as he can be to the recovery process."

By the way, while we're talking about injured point guards, Raul Neto again did not practice on Saturday because of quadriceps tightness.

Two more cuts... for now

On Saturday morning, both Naz Mitrou-Long and Kendall Pollard were waived by the Jazz, as promised yesterday. Both will participate in the SLC Stars' training camp.

The Stars also traded the rights to Tyrone Wallace to the Agua Caliente Clippers for the returning player rights to Aaron Craft and a 2018 second round draft pick.

Craft, though, will not play for the Stars this season, because he's signed a contract with AS Monaco Basket in the French league.

Depth on the roster

I thought one think Ingles said stood out Saturday. "I think our depth this year is really good. Probably the best we've had in the last three years since I've been here."

That's saying a lot! After all, at the beginning of the season, the Jazz were rated as having the No. 1 bench in the NBA last year. While it didn't turn out quite as good as that during the season itself, a lot of the blame for that goes to injuries.

And it was also interesting how Ingles said the Jazz may want to use their bench. "We've got the potential to play all of our guys at different points," Ingles said. "The way we want to play and get up and down the floor, we can sub and get guys in and out and play at a pretty high level for most of the game."

What we could be seeing is a trend towards using a European-style substitution pattern, trying to get guys at 100 percent during their whole stretch on the floor. Snyder, after all, studied Euroleague substitution patterns during his time in Russia, according to this Vice article.

"Everyone who comes in the game has to defend at a high level with intensity, running when they need to run, screening when they need to screen," Snyder said. "Even if it's not heavy minutes, that's how you gain an advantage."

Now, probably the most likely outcome is that the Jazz end up using a pretty standard American substitution pattern, but one in which they're not actively trying to pull bench players as quickly as possible for their starter replacements. Snyder's done a good job of avoiding full-scale hockey-style subs, and that's still going to be the case here.

The other factor here: injury avoidance. There's probably something to the idea that playing your players for fewer minutes in each game prevents the kind of fatigue that makes injuries more likely. With new "health GM" Mike Elliott on board, don't be surprised to see that as an even higher priority.

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