Doesn’t Exum kind of suck?
I don't know if this will work, but Exum's situation in Utah was pretty tough given where he was coming from and the kind of leash most Top 5 picks have with the franchise that selected them.
Don't get me wrong, there is obviously no way he should've been taken 5th overall, even taking into consideration that relatively weak 2014 draft class. So, you have an extremely raw kid coming from Australia with the weight of expectation on his shoulders.
The nice thing about being young/raw and on a team that finished 25-57 and is outside of major markets, though, is that it should've given Dante plenty of time and freedom in the NBA shadows to work on this game and craft an offensive skillset. Instead, he was unknowingly at the time drafted on a team not far from being playoff caliber. In seasons where he was available to play in Utah, they were under .500 only once and that was his rookie season (38-44). Unsurprisingly, that was the season he got the most run with the Jazz (22 minutes per game and nearly 30 mpg in the last third of the regular season).
When you're dealing with a guy as raw and unaccustomed to American basketball and the caliber of the NBA as Exum, he really needed several of those kind of unencumbered developmental years where he was
the focus or one of the primary focuses of the franchise looking to the future. He was that level of raw.
What ended up happening was this ... he had the lackluster rookie year where the attempts at developing his game were at least starting, he was getting more minutes as the season waned and showing real potential as a defender. The Jazz were assuming his 2nd year would see him start to break some bad habits offensively and take a little bit of a leap from a dismal offensive player to a serviceable offensive player with potential for more. Instead, the worst possible thing happened ... in the summer following his rookie year he tore his ACL while playing an exhibition game with the Australian national team.
That meant he was out the entire 2015-16 season. The Jazz finished 40-42 playing in a tough division/conference, and it was clear something was brewing with their young core of Hayward, Gobert, Favors and even Rodney Hood was seen as a serious talent with a high ceiling. Suddenly, those guys are the focus of the Jazz's training staff and Exum is sort of the forgotten man.
In 2016-17, what was actually Exum's 2nd season as a pro and as he was still getting his legs back from missing an entire season and rehabbing from injury, the Jazz won 51 games and made the 2nd round of the playoffs. Even without the injury, he was never going to be developed enough at 21 years old to be a major contributor on one of the best 4 teams in the West. That is before you get into the torn ACL and lost chance at developing during that year.
They had a VERY deep roster too that he had to fight for minutes with ... on the perimeter, you had Gordon Hayward, George Hill (probably peak Hill), Joe Ingles, Rodney Hood, Joe Johnson, Shelvin Mack and Alec Burks. On some other teams, maybe you can change course on Exum's development and go with less ballhandling in smallish lineups just to fit him somewhere on the court. They did some of that, but they also had Gobert and Favors in the frontcourt and those guys obviously had to play. And again, they probably do the developmental stuff if they weren't already a contender in the West, but there they were.
So then Hayward leaves and people in Utah think they're going into a rebuilding situation where Exum might finally start approaching his potential with a patient development ... and in steps Donovan Mitchell. I mean, the fact that they drafted Mitchell and, maybe more to the point, signed Ricky Rubio was Utah admitting its error in taking Exum but I still say he has never been given a proper chance to develop like our young guys currently are.
The Jazz being so good so soon after taking him and then his ill-timed injury crushed any chance of him having a career in Utah.
Will it work out here? I would bet against it. I actually like some of the stuff Exum brings to the table especially in comparison with Clarkson. They're almost polar opposites. Exum is quiet and unassuming with a focus on defense and trying to chip in where he can in other areas. Clarkson is an arrogant horse's ass who can light it up when his shot is falling but does nothing to help develop our young guys.
In a situation like the one we are in, give me the unassuming Aussie, pair him up with fellow kangaroo in Delly to help acclimate him, give him a fair shot to develop something resembling an offensive game and have him as a not-so-subtle hint to our three young lottery picks that things can go really badly really fast if you don't take advantage of every opportunity.
The picks, cap space and exception serve as the icing on the proverbial cake. The fact that I never again have to see Jordan Clarkson dribbling 20x on one side of the court while the other 4 guys stand on the otherside watching him... that makes it
a la mode.
