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SALT LAKE CITY — When Jazz forward Jarrell Brantley walked out onto the court in front of 10,000-plus fans, he was a little awestruck.
He wasn’t in Charleston anymore, and he wasn’t in a mid-major gym. For the first time, he was wearing an NBA jersey in an NBA arena and there were a lot of NBA fans there to watch him.
So, yeah, there were some nerves. But there was also a lot of joy. Moments like that are what he had been imagining in his head for a very long time.
“As soon as I got out there, I smiled,” Brantley said. “It can be overwhelming, but at the same time these are all the things I prayed for over the years. It was fun. And having people calling our names — we don’t have Donovan (Mitchell) out there, we don’t have Rudy (Gobert), so right now we get the chance to be the stars, in a sense.”
Brantley was one of the Jazz's stars in their 85-68 Summer League opening loss to Memphis on Monday at Vivint Arena — or as much of a star as one can be in a 17-point loss. He scored 11 points and did so in a variety of ways: he hit a three, hit a mid-range step back and even got a bucket with the post hook shot. He also finished with four rebounds and an emphatic weak side block that drew cheers from the large crowd.
He played the best of the Jazz’s three second-round picks, but there is one stat that he knows he’s going to hear about from his friends back home in Charleston. He picked up eight fouls in just 28 minutes of play (players have 10 fouls in Summer League).
“This is my first NBA game, first NBA experience,” Brantley said, laughing off his fouling effectiveness. "I’m OK with the eight fouls. I’m sure a lot of people back home will be clowning me, saying I’m still a hack.”
While Brantley had plenty of moments where he displayed his wide-spreading skill set, his fellow rookies struggled.
Justin Wright-Foreman scored just 6 points on 3-of-14 from the field. Miye Oni was 0-for-3 with four rebounds and a plus/minus of minus 32.
Utah Jazz summer league head coach Lamar Skeeter had a pretty simple answer for the rookies' ineffectiveness: It was their first game.
They weren’t the first rookies to struggle and they won’t be the last. Last season at the Salt Lake City Summer League, Trae Young was completely ineffective as he adjusted to the speed of facing NBA players — his rookie season turned out just fine.
Wright-Foreman and Oni aren’t Young, but it’d be unfair to overly criticize them for a poor performance in their first taste of NBA action.
“I think for them, they know they are competitors. They are going to play hard. They are going to compete. They are going to bounce back,” Skeeter said. “I am not worried about them at all. It’s about finding what their strengths are at this level … first game, no one really knows what’s going on.”
And so Monday night, as the trio of rookies discussed the game, there was some disappointment, but also a bit of freaking out. Yeah, they lost — and they wanted to make sure they recognized that first — but they had just got real-life NBA action. That was worth celebrating.
“It was like, ‘Yo, that was our first game!’” Brantley said.
