Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz are facing the Minnesota Timberwolves at 6 p.m. Mountain time Friday night. Here's what's going on around the team.
Ricky Rubio return
Ricky Rubio is playing the Minnesota Timberwolves for the first time, having played there for six seasons. Naturally, he has a lot of friends in Minnesota and was somewhat sad to go, so this will be a bittersweet chance to play against his old team.
Canis Hoopus, the Minnesota Timberwolves blog for SB Nation, wrote this great compendium of Ricky Rubio's best moments in Minnesota. If you have time, read the comments on that article, too. You start to realize how important Rubio was to Wolves fans.
Rubio also told Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune about returning home, and of course his former teammates razzed him a little bit about his new look. Zgoda has video and some good quotes from shootaround Friday.
Raul Neto, Rodney Hood available
Raul Neto has been cleared to play and is available for tonight's game, according to Tony Jones of the Salt Lake Tribune.
We'll see who plays more backup point guard tonight: Donovan Mitchell or Neto. Given Burks' good play Wednesday, I think it might be more realistic to see Mitchell play more there, but we'll see.
Rodney Hood will also be available, though limited:
Jazz guard Rodney Hood told The Tribune he will play tonight, but that he's still not quite at 100 percent. He still has a stomach bug — Tony Jones (@tribjazz) October 20, 2017
Joel Bolomboy signing two-way contract ======================================
Joel Bolomboy is in Milwaukee today, according to his Instagram story. While it had been reported that Bolomboy was eligible to be selected in tomorrow's G-League draft, Bolomboy signed a last-minute two-way contract with the Bucks first.
Bolomboy, then, takes the spot of another Utahn who was recently waived: Utah State's Jalen Moore. It was actually Moore's call to step away from the game because of his troubles with anxiety.
Isaiah Cousins trade
Speaking of the G-League draft, the Stars traded away their No. 2 pick in the draft on Thursday for Isaiah Cousins and the No. 33 pick in the draft.
Cousins deserves the pick because of his production last year, scoring 17 points per game for high-powered Reno. He wasn't particularly efficient, only shooting 29 percent from three, but did add 5.8 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game there. Cousins was the No. 59 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. He's a 6-foot-6 shooting guard, so he does have NBA size, and is 23 years old. There might be something there.
The G-League draft is Saturday at 11 a.m, we'll see who the Jazz draft with the No. 33 pick and their other selections.
Here's the full list of available players to draft. Some notable names:
- Tyrell Corbin, son of former Jazz coach Tyrone Corbin.
- Daesung Lee, who played his final collegiate season at BYU-Hawaii, scoring 5.7 PPG in 2012-13.
- Scott Machado, who played six games for the Houston Rockets in 2012-13.
- Amjyot Singh, "Indian basketball's future superstar."
- Tony Wroten, who played in 145 NBA games with Philadelphia and Memphis and averaged 11.3 points per game. He's only 24! I'm kind of amazed he's in this draft.
