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SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz's 92-76 summer league win over the San Antonio Spurs from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.
1. Grayson Allen struggles to score at the rim
First, the bad news: Jazz draftee Grayson Allen struggled to score in his first taste of basketball at Vivint Arena. He scored 11 points, but shot 4-16 from the floor in order to do so.
The problem wasn't really the outside shooting: Allen went 2-6 from 3-point range, certainly good enough. And he hit two of his mid-range shots, including a jumper and a floater.
The defenses are also just much more disciplined. Again, in college, the defense probably bites on this up and down move in transition:
"The nerves were definitely there," Allen noted. "The nerves, anxiousness, excitement, which leads to speeding up and going to fast on some stuff where you should slow up and make a good read."
We talk about how athletic Allen is, and he absolutely showed that at the combine. But he'll need to raise his level of functional athleticism, and in particular his ability to jump off one leg, in order to have more success at the rim.
The good news is that we said the same thing about Donovan Mitchell last summer, and he picked it up during the offseason to an incredible degree. If Allen gets the same boost, it would help his game a lot.
2. But Allen adds to the game with secondary skills
The really good news is that Allen found a way to impact the game without scoring, something that past Jazz draft failures like Trey Burke and Trey Lyles never really figured out.
In contrast, Allen nearly had a triple-double in only about 20 minutes on the floor on Monday, adding eight rebounds and seven assists. I loved some of his reads in the pick and roll to find open teammates for easy looks.
So in this test, Allen passed with flying colors. He's going to get the ball in situations like this for the Jazz over and over, and he showed an ability to find the open man based on how the defense was reacting. Allen didn't bring the ball up the floor much, but was the team's best playmaker anyway.
3. Tony Bradley shows off what he's learned
It wasn't the best game I've seen from Tony Bradley, but he filled his role extremely well. Bradley is an old-school big man: his job is to set screens, roll to the rim and finish, and protect the rim.
I thought he did a good job on everything but the finishing on Monday night. On the good side were plays like this, where Bradley caught the ball, kept it high, and finished in traffic:
Bradley's impact was most felt on the defensive end, where he picked up four blocks. He was a legitimate problem in the paint for the Spurs, and bothered even more than the shots he blocked. The Spurs shot just 18-38 in the paint.
Bradley is not athletic, and that shows sometimes. He fell out of bounds after getting awkwardly bumped where another player may have stayed stronger, giving up a 5-on-4 on the other end. But Bradley even looks better at that part of it too: he ran the court to get a layup ahead of the defense late. That's encouraging.
I don't know that Bradley is NBA rotation-ready yet, but he's getting closer. I'm interested to see how he continues to develop through these eight or so summer league games.
