Game 2 vs. Houston Rockets: L, 85-71
Game 3 vs. Brooklyn Nets: W, 98-69
After Utah easily handled Miami in their first summer league game, they’ve gone on to split their next two. After getting dominated by the Houston Rockets they proceeded to smash the Brooklyn Nets. Utah’s summer league slate will continue tomorrow morning at 11 am with a fixture against the Indiana Pacers…
The Positives
- Jeremy Evans: Evans has had two really solid performances over Utah’s last two contests. He’s rebounding and scoring at a pretty high rate. The former second round pick out of Western Kentucky in 2010 is showing he could have what it takes to be a good role player in the NBA. At 25 he’s one of the oldest players in the summer league, so he should be playing at a high level here and he is.
- Alec Burks: Burks has so far been Utah’s best player in the summer league. He’s scored double digits in every game so far and is showing great ability to get to the free throw line. I’d still like to see more from him from beyond the arch, he’s only shot 1-4 from downtown throughout these last two games. He also needs to get better from the field; he’s not making a high percentage of his shots, but overall he’s been good.
- Blocked Shots: Utah has been blocking a lot of shots. They led the block margin against Houston by a tally of 8-4 and led it against Brooklyn by a tally of 7-2.
- Free Throws: Utah is also getting to the line at a high rate and making most of their shots from the charity stripe. They shot 22-24 (91.7%) against Houston and 29-37 (78.4%) against Brooklyn. This is a huge improvement over their first game against Miami.
- Rebounds: despite getting outrebounded by Houston by a slim margin, Utah has still been a pretty good rebounding team thus far in summer league. They dominated Brooklyn on the glass today by a mark of 39-22.
The Negatives
- Trey Burke: Burke was really bad again in his second game. He shot 5-15 from the field and only had two assists and his team was dominated. Meanwhile he didn’t play against Brooklyn and his team had their best outing yet as they dominated Brooklyn. It’s really early, but that shouldn’t be happening.
- Three Point Shooting: Much like Orlando, Utah needs to show more consistency from beyond the arch. Against Houston they shot 3-17 (17.6%) on three pointers and got dominated. Today against Brooklyn they shot 8-17 (47.1%) and won easily.
Key Player Stats (combined)
- Trey Burke*: 11pts, 2ast, 5-15 FGM-A, 1-6 3PM-A
- Jeremy Evans: 12.5 PPG, 8.5 RPG, 2.5 APG, .563 FG%
- Alec Burks: 16 PPG, 2 RPG, 1.5 APG, .345 FG%, .250 3P%
- Rudy Gobert: 2 PPG, 4.5 RPG, 1 APG, 1.5 BPG, .500 FG%
- Dionte Christmas: 7 PPG, 4 RPG, 2 APG, .272 FG%, .333 3P%
*- Trey Burke did not play against Brooklyn; his stats above are only from the Houston game.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
