Trey Burke's pivotal season will come down to shooting


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SALT LAKE CITY — When Dante Exum went down with a torn ACL playing for the Australian National Team, Trey Burke became the likely starter for the Utah Jazz.

Having filled that role for most of his rookie season, and half of his sophomore year, before being replaced by the rookie Exum, Jazz fans are familiar with what Burke offers. He's been a score-first guard, with poor shooting numbers, low turnover numbers, and solid, albeit unspectacular assist numbers.

Coincidentally, Burke averaged 12.8 points per game in his rookie and sophomore seasons despite playing different minutes and different roles for the team. As a rookie, Burke contributed 5.7 assists per game, a great number for a rookie playing 32 minutes each night. As a sophomore, that number dipped to 4.3, a disappointing drop, despite losing just two minutes off of his average minutes per game. Keeping his scoring at the same rate, despite losing 2 minutes per game, and seeing a dip in all of his shooting numbers highlights an increased scoring burden placed on Burke's shoulders, something he obviously struggled with in Quin Snyder's system.

For his career, Burke converts 37 percent of his field goals and 32 percent of his 3-point attempts. Those numbers are far from adequate for a starting point guard, and something he definitely must improve on if he is to become the full-time starter for the Jazz. Curiously, his shooting numbers got worse as a second-year player, seeing a drop from 41 percent inside the 3-point line to 40 percent, 33 percent from the perimeter to 31 percent, and most surprisingly a drop from 90 percent from the free-throw line to 75 percent.

While shooting the floor in live-game action could hint at better scouting with teams forcing Burke into more difficult shots, the drop in free-throw percentage tells a different story. While Burke's free-throw attempts increased from 1.6 attempts to 1.9 attempts as a sophomore, it's unlikely shooting an extra free throw once every three games was taxing enough to lower his free-throw shooting by a full 15 percent.

A drop of 15 percent in points despite more experience in the league may imply Burke was bothered mentally perhaps by the competition at point guard from Exum. As a rookie, Burke's main competition came from Diante Garrett, an undrafted guard who signed with the Jazz only after Burke broke his finger in a preseason game. But the second year, he was forced to compete for his job with Exum after a 70-game sample size from his rookie season.

This season, unless rookie Raul Neto, or second-year guard Bryce Cotton are able to step up in preseason and show a more innate ability to run the Jazz offense, the starting job should be Burke's to lose. While the same could have been said last season, there is no inevitable need for the Jazz to replace Burke with either Neto or Cotton in the long run. If Burke can earn and maintain the job, the Jazz will still have him on a cheap rookie scale contract through 2017 and have the rights to re-sign him beyond that date. That confidence, mixed with a second full season under Snyder could pay dividends for Burke in the long run.

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Looking again at Burke's shooting percentages, there can be some confidence for Jazz fans that as a rookie, the guard shot 38 percent from the floor and 33 percent from the 3-point line. Those numbers are unspectacular but are salvageable by increasing his efficiency by just a few percentage points. Finding those percentage points is as easy as looking at Burke's worst games and finding a way to make them average. In Burke's 10 worst games of the 2014-15 season, he shot a combined 11 of 108, or roughly 10 percent. If he were to have converted 40 percent of his shots in those games alone, he would have raised his season average to 40 percent from the floor. While those numbers are still unspectacular, they are far more manageable for the Jazz coaching staff.

Over that same stretch of 10 games, Burke shot a combined 4 of 47 from the 3-point line, or 8 percent. Had Burke shot just 33 percent from the perimeter over that stretch, he would have increased his 3-point shooting percentage a full 3 percent from 31 percent to 34 percent. Understanding that improving his numbers in just one in every seven games throughout the season could show a drastic growth in his efficiency, there is plenty of room for improvement beyond that.

In addition to those 10 games, there were another 15 games where Burke failed to convert at least 30 percent of his field goals, all games where just one more made field goal would drastically improve his percentages.

While there is certainly no guarantee that Burke can improve his shooting percentage, there are other areas of the game where the second-year guard improved. Burke improved his free-throw rate, steal percentage, block percentage and win shares while dropping his turnover percentage, all promising signs for the 2015-16 campaign.

Regardless of what Burke does this season for the Jazz, it's unlikely that he'll remain the team's starting point guard long-term, as Exum should came back in 2016 to regain the spot he earned as a sophomore. That doesn't mean however that Burke can't increase his value to the Jazz enormously as the opportunity to start has once against presented itself.

Luckily for both Burke and the Jazz, the areas in which the third-year guard can improve are clear-cut and relatively easy to fix. It's hard to imagine a second straight season of falling shooting percentages for Burke, as Jazz fans should be cautiously optimistic about a position at point guard that has appeared grim over the past several seasons.


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About the Author: Ben Anderson ------------------------------

Ben Anderson is the co-host of Gunther in the Afternoon with Kyle Gunther on 1320 KFAN from 3-7, Monday through Friday. Read Ben's Utah Jazz blog at 1320kfan.com, and follow him on Twitter @BenKFAN.

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