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It’s going to be like old home week for the Utah Jazz.
Thanks to some local names, the Utah Jazz will have familiar competition in preseason practice trying to find a second postman to play with Lauri Markkanen, the team’s Finnish 7-footer who averaged better than 23 points and 8 rebounds in his seventh season as a pro.
Walker Kessler, who spent one year at Carolina and one at Auburn, averaged more than 8 points, 7 rebounds and 2 blocks per game for the Jazz last season. He has bulked up to 250 pounds on the skinny frame he brought to UNC, where he played behind Garrison Brooks, Armando Bacot and Day’Ron Sharp. Kessler shot 65 percent from the floor but still cannot hit the outside shot that led to his undoing in Chapel Hill.
So Kessler and Bacot will be back together at least through training camp, where the big news was the second-round pick of Kyle Filipowski from Duke (like Harrison Ingram with the Spurs). Kessler was on a team that beat the Blue Devils twice during the crowd-restricted COVID season. Filipowski went 2-2 against the Heels in his two years in Durham, and Bacot had two of his greatest games in victories over Duke in his All-American junior year.
Filipowski has the best chance to make the roster despite his poor outside shooting season in 2024. He has the stroke from 3-point land but made barely 30 percent as a sophomore. Lack of shooting range has been the biggest criticism of Bacot during his career when he became Carolina’s new all-time leading rebounder.
Utah’s top rebounder is also familiar to Tar Heel fans. Six-nine power forward John Collins played at Wake Forest and was a first-round draft pick in 2017 by Atlanta, where he put in six seasons with the Hawks. In his pro career, Collins has averaged nearly 6 rebounds per game and has never shot under 50 percent from the floor. His 3-point range is not bad, hitting 37 percent for the Jazz last season.
So it will be interesting to eavesdrop on those Big Four alums in the northwest. Can Bacot maintain a nose for the ball as an NBA pivot man, where he will face bigger and stronger opponents? And unless Mondo is developing a 15-footer during the off-season his chances on paper are not great. But his heart and spirit are enormous, as we know.
Shooting guard Cormac Ryan joined Bacot with what they call an exhibit 10 contract, Ryan’s with Oklahoma City, the top seed in the Western Conference in 2024. Ryan made 287 3-pointers in his five seasons as a college player.
Exhibit 10 contracts are for undrafted players who sign a one-year deal with an NBA franchise to go to training camp and try to earn at least a two-way contract to move back and forth between the big team and its G-League affiliate during the regular season.
Featured image via Todd Melet
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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