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SALT LAKE CITY — There's an argument that Walker Kessler has been Utah's second best player this season.
He's had a true game-changing impact on the defensive end and has proven to be a valuable offensive big, too. He was far from that on Friday against the Hawks, though. In fact, the young rookie may have had his worst game of the season.
Kessler had 2 points, five rebounds and one block, and Atlanta outscored the Jazz by 15 points during Kessler's 18 minutes on the court.
"It wasn't a great game," Kessler said, bluntly.
It was a game that made you remember that Kessler, no matter how good he's been, is still a rookie. He got caught in no man's land against the Atlanta pick-and-roll, and went for shot fakes over and over. He struggled to get the timing right between contesting Trae Young's floater and preventing the lob threat, and he failed to block out a few times and missed what should have been easy defensive rebounds.
Yeah, not a great game.
"I mean, believe it or not, he's still a rookie," a sympathetic Mike Conley said following the game. "We take that for granted. We ask so much of him; he does so many good things for us. Tonight was a night he didn't do normal Walker things, and there'll be nights like that."
Conley knows that all too well. He played in his 1,000th NBA game on Friday — not all of them have been great. Over the course of a season, there's, obviously, going to be a few clunkers. Everyone has a bad day at work.
Still, Conley said it took him four or five seasons to stop beating himself up over a poor performance; and, looking back, he said a lot of that stress was anything but valuable.
"That's what I preach to all the guys: Just go out there and play. Shoot, we're living the dream, so what are we stressing about? So if you make a mistake, go back out there and play harder. You've been doing this game for a long time, working on your game for a long time. Trust yourself and be confident," Conley said.
Kessler has slowly learned that lesson this season. When Joel Embiid hit a game-winner over him in December, he lingered over it — running through the play over and over. There are things to learn from those moments, of course; the key, though, Kessler said, is to not have them impact the next game or the next game or the next game.
"A point of maturing for me is just learning the NBA is a long season," he said. "I don't know anyone that's gonna play a great game for 82 games. And so, learning from it, moving on, going into the next game with a clear headspace and don't be thinking about the last game."
Kessler said he's getting better at doing that, too. He said he'll watch film of Friday's game, pull some things from it, and then move on to focus on Monday where he hopes to get back to doing, as Conley put it, the normal Walker things.
Conley, for one, isn't worried about the poor showing from the rookie. In fact, he's eager to see just how much more Kessler can grow.
"The first time we played in open gym, he was shooting 3s — making them, too," Conley said. "So I was like, 'Oh, we got this pick-and-pop big. This is gonna be great.' He's not that right now. He's dunking everything, blocking everything, so I think he's got a lot more to show you guys. So that's a good thing."
