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 Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information.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 — Something clicked with Ochai Agbaji in the second half of his rookie year.
After struggling to begin the season — and spending time in the G League — Agbaji figured the NBA out.
Over the last 42 games of the season, Agbaji scored 10.1 points on 37% 3-point shooting. In the final 20 (all starts), he averaged 13.6 points, 2.6 rebounds and 2.3 assists. He went from floundering on the bench to a competent NBA role player. He put up 3s at volume, became more aggressive in transition, and got better as the season went on.
Now, he'll get a chance to expand his game even more.
"It's an opportunity for him to get a ton of game reps and keep building on probably the last 10 games of the season," Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. "I think we all saw him take on a different role in those last 10 games, and so we want to try to build on that this offseason."
The Salt Lake City Summer League, which starts Monday, will give Agbaji a chance to continue to develop his game, as well as a platform to showcase it.
"I step into that leader role, being that point guard or facilitator, and just being all around aggressive for my game and looking for other guys and keeping everybody in the game," Agbaji said Thursday.
Aggressive, huh. So does that mean he'll be ready to fire up 25 shots per game?
"Something like that," he said with a smile. "That's a lot, but, yeah, I'm just gonna be aggressive."
Agbaji was methodical last season in his approach on the offensive end. When he first broke into the rotation, he rarely took anything but corner 3-pointers. As the season went on, he added a few cuts and started to take a few mid-range shots. By the end of the season, he was even creating for others, and had a career-high eight assists in Utah's final game of the season. He stayed in his comfort zone and slowly expanded as confidence grew.
"He kind of did a little bit every single game to show that he could play," Jazz summer league coach Evan Bradds said. "And then just continued that throughout the season. When he got a lot more opportunities at the end, he really took advantage of it."
Bradds, who was Agbaji's player development coach last year, is hopeful the 23-year-old wing will continue that trajectory during summer league.
"I think he has the mindset to be the right kind of aggressive, like sometimes when you tell guys to be too aggressive, they just start launching shots — it's like, 'that's not exactly what we want.'" he said. "Luckily for us, he has a pretty good feel of that. Today, I thought he was great. I thought he did just enough to make it seem like he's being super aggressive without just taking bad shots. … I've got all the faith in the world in him."
There's obvious excitement surrounding this year's editions of summer league due to Utah's three first-round picks. All three will potentially make their Utah debuts (Taylor Hendricks and Brice Sensabaugh both missed Thursday's practice with injuries) and that will, no doubt, be the main draw at the Delta Center next week. But this should be Agbaji's team — and his development may take center stage.
"The confidence that I'm bringing from last year and those last 25 games that I played, it's just kind of like stepping into a new role," he said. "Just getting comfortable with that. And just being that leader to these guys, and then carrying that over to the real squad."
