Finding a role for Alec Burks

SALT LAKE CITY — During the Utah Jazz’s exit interviews last May, combo guard Alec Burks sat before the assembled media and spoke as if he’d lost something valuable.

Reduced to a 42 game regular season and exactly zero minutes in the playoffs, Burks talked about what was the latest frustrating chapter in a series of familiar, injury-riddled campaigns.

“… I’m used to blowing by people, going over people, around people,” Burks said of his missing athleticism at the time. “I’m just not that right now. And I need to do more things to get back to that explosive athlete I was.”

After enduring through a lingering knee issue that robbed him of his speed, leaping ability and the season’s first 34 games, Burks, in his own words, went on to say that he simply needed time to recover before returning to his “old self.”

Fast forward a few short months, and the old Burks may be back. When asked to describe the current state of his health at Jazz media day, Burks said: “I feel like after the summer, the summer I had, I feel like I was before I got hurt. You know that December day two years ago, I feel like that. More explosive, more like myself.”

For Burks, a return to peak health is a great first step, but only that. The next—and most important—step is staying healthy.

And even then, questions remain about where Burks, 26, fits on this team. While his availability, at the moment, does not appear to be in peril, the same cannot be said of his opportunity.

The problem he faces this season is simple: A direct path to playing time may not exist even if healthy. Each of the Jazz’s backcourt imports — Ricky Rubio, Donovan Mitchell and Thabo Sefolosha — stands in Burks’ way in the rotational pecking order, while incumbent guards Dante Exum and Joe Ingles appear poised for expanded roles as well. Given all of that, it would appear that Burks is the odd man out, which suggests he’ll fight to acquire playing time.

If Burks is to win that fight, he’ll do so by diversifying and improving on his existing skills while leaving the coaching staff to work around his weaknesses, namely his defense.

At his core, Burks is a contested shot artist — one capable of beginning at a standstill, accelerating into the chest of a backpedaling defender and holing in with an off-handed flip shot.

Last year, those types of finishes were a rarity for Burks, who shot a career-low 40.3 percent from the restricted area, according to stats from nba.com. Driving to the basket has always been his bread-and-butter, but in playing with compromised athleticism last season, the ability to reach his preferred spots proved much tougher for him. The ripple effect was that he settled into taking a higher volume of threes — evidenced by a 7 percent rise in 3-point attempts over 2015-16 — as a means of compensating.

The problem? His ailing knee showed there too, as Burks, a knockdown shooter in previous years, often fell short on his long-distance flights — an issue that stemmed from the lack of rise on his jump shot.

It might be overly simplistic to say that his jump shot will return to form with renewed health, but at the same time, exercising cautious optimism is hardly a stretch. He’s only a year removed from shooting 40 percent from three and, more recently, shot 39.2 percent on corner threes last season. He also shot a respectable 38 percent on catch-and-shoot threes in 2016-17, a shot type that should increase by virtue of playing alongside the Jazz’s myriad ball-handlers. His weakside spacing can still be valuable when ignored by the defense.

One of the intended consequences of team-wide spacing is that it allows for speed to be used as a weapon, specifically in attacking mismatches and closeouts. In the play below, the ball is swung around the arc before landing with Burks in the corner, who blows past a recovering Shaun Livingston and finishes with relative ease.

The good news for Burks is that if he can retain and diversify his perimeter arsenal, his mere presence becomes something that bends defenses in ways that benefit the other areas of his game — particularly in cutting to the basket without the ball, something he did very little of last season, according to stats from nba.com. Given the influx of ball-handlers, Burks will be forced to play as a cutter in the Jazz’s halfcourt sets more — and with greater effect — than ever before. This will be a bigger adjustment than it sounds. In four of his six seasons, the majority of Burks’ scoring has been of the unassisted variety, per stats from nba.com.

In the past, he’s been more apt to catch the ball coming off a screen at or near the perimeter before attacking on a drive; now, when featured in lineups that prioritize dribble penetration and interior passing, Burks would do well to leverage his individual spacing so as to create navigable corridors to cut through, like in the play below.

In previous seasons, Burks’ role has been something of a moving target, ranging from stand-in starter and fourth-quarter finisher to backup point guard and score-first sixth man. If anything is set to change for him this season, it’s that his role will be more narrow in task and less of a Band-Aid for the Jazz’s previous lack of depth.

While Burks has served credibly as a backup point guard, it’s unlikely that he’ll log much time there this season considering what orbits him on the current roster. But in a way, asking him to do less may unlock more.

He can still operate as a secondary or tertiary ball-handler in guard-heavy lineups if Quin Snyder so chooses, but by lessening his duties as a primary facilitator, Burks can revisit his strengths: finishing through contact, spotting up away from the ball and pushing tempo.

In terms of the here and now, no other player on the Jazz’s roster can replicate that calculus in full — at least not to the degree Burks does. As a collective, Mitchell and Exum represent the surest bets to mimic his effect, but they remain theoretical propositions until proven otherwise. Strictly speaking, Burks’ present value flows from the Jazz’s shortage of offensive firepower. He is not without warts, to be sure, but his distinct package of skills should earn him playing time in smaller, offensive-oriented lineups.

So in the interim, Burks is back to his old self. But with more time and a little luck, a return to his best self may be next.

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