Keyonte George has all the personality traits and characteristics of an ideal NBA player.
He is the exact type of confident — bordering on cocky — player that it takes to excel at this level. He is a dedicated student of the game and is religious about studying film, whether it’s his own, his teammates’, his opponents’ or during the postseason, of which he has not made an appearance. He is by all accounts an incredibly hard worker who asks questions, seeks out advice and is willing to offer his own when needed.
He’s a company man and as coachable as they come. When Jazz coach Will Hardy benched him to start the second half of a game earlier this season due to poor defensive effort and George was later asked about it, he went on at length about understanding the choice and then literally said, “We’re just all blessed to have Will in our ears.” Ten out of 10 coaches would want a player with that temperament.
Despite this near-perfect NBA approach, there are still some serious questions about George that need to be answered. First, is he an NBA point guard? What role should he be playing? Has his time with the Jazz been an unfair audition considering what has been asked of him? When does a decision need to be made?
It would be easy to dismiss these questions and the player if it were someone who had less passion, lacked awareness or was maybe playing on a team with more continuity. But George is not that kind of person and he has been put into a really unique situation, so his circumstances deserve earnest consideration, which is what we’re here to do today.
Is Keyonte George an NBA point guard?
Before embarking on his professional career, George was not a point guard. If anything, he was more of a combo guard who was a ball-in-hand scorer. He wasn’t tasked with being the one who would set the table for the rest of a team.
But, the Jazz drafted him believing that his understanding of the game, size and scoring ability would give him a chance at developing into an NBA point guard. The problem so far is that the same kinds of weaknesses that were apparent leading up to the 2023 draft are still the most prominent weaknesses for George.
He came into the NBA shooting about 33% from 3-point range during his lone season at Baylor and has shot at just about that rate in the NBA. He is defensively targeted because he is viewed as physically weaker in that area and although he does not have a negative assist-to-turnover ratio as he did in college, his turnover rate of late has been alarming.
“It is a problem,” Hardy said of George’s propensity for miscues. “It’s not catastrophic. It’s not fatal … But these are the growing pains, and the responsibility of myself and our staff and Keyonte is to work through those moments. He’s not going to get better at them, we’re not going to get better at them by hiding him from those moments … I have no doubt that a breakthrough is coming, but right now it is a problem.”
The Jazz had a ton of confidence in George as the future point guard of this team early in his rookie season. He had incredible flashes during summer league, played himself into a starting role after just eight games of the regular season and seemed to be excelling.
But, it’s important to remember the circumstances surrounding those early days of the 2023-24 season. George becoming a starting point guard was not due to him outplaying an All-Star and earning the role because his play was awe-inspiring. He supplanted Talen Horton-Tucker in the starting unit, which quite frankly, was not the highest bar to clear.
And, at the time, the Jazz were still playing with a roster that had more experienced players and there was some continuity to the roster. Instead of Kelly Olynyk, a veteran secondary playmaker who had mastered adapting to new environments, the Jazz have gone from Taylor Hendricks and Kyle Filipowski and John Collins and there’s been some blending of positions and some reworking of roles as the front court works through injuries and experimentation.
Instead of Kris Dunn, another NBA veteran who truly understood what has staying power in the NBA and how to run an offense, George is sharing the backcourt and playing off of rookie Isaiah Collier and other guards who are more suited to shooting guard positions.
Patty Mills is someone that George can certainly learn from, but he has a completely different style of play and is on the tail-end of his career in a more mentoring role than anything else.
There have also been injuries across a roster that is seemingly younger and younger by the day. At the end of last season, the Jazz’s three 2023 rookies, including George, were playing a lot together and were flanked by a lot of short-term Jazz players and two-way players. It was not a great roster and George struggled.
It’s really hard to say how things would have looked if the Jazz had held a more consistent roster, if George was playing on a more experienced team. Would the turnovers go down? Would he be in better positions to score with higher efficiency? It’s possible, maybe even probable, based on what we saw early on from George.
But, given the data we have in front of us, it feels as if the Jazz’s point guard experiment with George is not going well. If he were to continue on this trajectory, he would not be successful as an NBA point guard. He turns the ball over too much, isn’t great when he’s blitzed, isn’t the fastest decision maker and doesn’t seem to be improving in those areas.
While confidence in George as a point guard was incredibly high across the organization last year, this year a number of Jazz staffers have started to waiver in that belief. Even Hardy has tried to play George off the ball a little bit more.
That being said, the Jazz still see a ton of potential and are nowhere near giving up on the idea that George can be a valuable piece moving forward.
What position should Keyonte George play?
If he’s not a point guard, then where does George belong? It’s really hard to answer this question.
If he wasn’t turning the ball over so much and was a little bit more decisive and efficient in executing the offense, then we probably wouldn’t be asking this question. If he shot the ball better and didn’t have the ball in his hands as much then he’d probably seem like an ideal shooting guard. If he wasn’t shooting the ball much better but was a precise passer who played above-average defense, then it might be easier to see him as a role player.
Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy slaps hands with Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George, left, in the second half of an NBA basketball game Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023, in Salt Lake City.| Isaac Hale, Associated Press
There are plenty of tweener guards in the NBA who don’t have excellent offensive statistics but are able to stay on the floor because they find a couple of things that they excel at.
There are a couple of reasons it’s hard to say where George belongs in the NBA ecosystem. One, as stated above, he doesn’t have that one thing that he’s excelling at, and two, he’s been primarily used as a point guard, which is not really a natural fit for him, so it’s hard decide if he’d succeed in a role we can only imagine at this point.
It’s possible that George has taken on so much since being drafted that we haven’t seen a real glimpse of what he can be at his best. We know that he is smart and understands the game, we know that he can heat up and be a real scoring threat and we’ve seen flashes of intelligent defending. But frankly, George hasn’t really been put in a position in which it’s easy to succeed, which brings us to our next question.
‘He’s dealing with a lot’
For most NBA rookies, celebrating being drafted into the NBA is fleeting, because very soon afterward, they realize that even though they made it, nothing is guaranteed. They are immediately trying to prove that they really do belong, that they deserve real minutes and that they are worth a second contract. It’s hard to make it to the NBA and even harder to stay.
“I am not hyper focused on his numbers. I’m hyper focused on how he goes about his business every day on the court. And I do think there are strides being made there. But yes, it is necessary for all of us, me included, to in certain moments, recognize that he is dealing with a lot, and it is a change.”
— Jazz coach Will Hardy on Keyonte George
Since day one, George has been at quite a disadvantage. He is auditioning for his place in the NBA and playing for a second contract while playing point guard for the first time in his life. He is in unfamiliar territory and if he isn’t successful, it might be because of what he’s been asked to do, not because of what he is actually capable of. That seems unfair.
“He’s dealing with a lot,” Hardy said. “It’s a hard position to play, for anybody. There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of game management, there’s a lot of communication with the coach, with your teammates, while trying to manage the game, time, score … I am not hyper focused on his numbers. I’m hyper focused on how he goes about his business every day on the court. And I do think there are strides being made there. But yes, it is necessary for all of us, me included, to in certain moments, recognize that he is dealing with a lot, and it is a change.”
Of course, ever the company man, and with the maturity of a much older player, when I asked George if he saw the situation as unfair, he said exactly what he needed to.
“The organization is who pays you, so you got to kind of block out the outside noise and really lock in to what the head coach wants and what the higher-ups want,” he said. “If in their eyes, they think you’re competing and playing your role the right way, the blessing is gonna come no matter what anybody says … If I’m doing what the coach wants, then I’m setting myself up for success. So I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s unfair.”
I can imagine a world where George is not responsible for making sure that every player on the court is getting touches and is not responsible for the flow of the offense and is not the one setting up every play or handling the ball as an on-ball point guard. In that world I think it’s possible that he is able to focus more on his defense, score more effectively and be a more efficient player.
I can also imagine a world where George is surrounded by a more cohesive roster and his decisions are easier, which could make for him being a successful combo guard at the NBA level. And, George can imagine that too.
He understands the NBA landscape and sees what happens to one-dimensional players. He doesn’t want to be that.
“If you can be versatile and do different things, it makes you more effective,” he said. “If you can start the game off getting everybody involved, and then switch your mindset to be aggressive, I think it kind of makes you a special player … It’s all about being on the floor. If coach looks down the bench and knows, ‘OK, he can play with this group and another group,’ it makes you effective. So I think, to your question, just the point guard thing being new, it’s not about it being new. It’s just about being a basketball player.”
When does a decision need to be made?
On a team with a more expedited timeline, one that was trying to win now, George would very much be in a bad position. It is often more difficult for guards to transition to the NBA and time is not always on their side. The NBA world moves quickly and so many times we see that guards are not successful early on and the NBA moves on without them.
“If in their eyes, they think you’re competing and playing your role the right way, the blessing is gonna come no matter what anybody says … If I’m doing what the coach wants, then I’m setting myself up for success.”
— Jazz guard Keyonte George
George might not be on a roster that is designed for success, but fortunately he is on a team that has time. The Jazz can afford to work through the growing pains of George as a point guard in an effort to try to develop that side of his game. They can afford experimenting with him in a number of ways and trying to figure out exactly what would make him most successful at this level because they aren’t trying to win an NBA title right now.
The hope is that all of these questions can be answered in the coming years and that in time George will round into form and be a valuable piece of the Jazz’s future. Even if it turns out that George is more of a role player coming off the bench as a combo-guard scorer for a future Jazz team, that’s OK.
Of course there is a chance that it doesn’t work out, that the experiments fail and that the Jazz eventually decide that George is not a part of the future. That’s the risk that comes with every single player in this league.
The good news though, is that the Jazz don’t have to decide right now. They don’t have to slap a label on George and they don’t need to be making any sweeping declarations about who George is or what kind of NBA player he will become.
Eventually a decision will need to be made. Eventually we will have enough data to be more clear on what George’s potential is. Maybe we’ll look back at these early returns and say we should have known where things were headed. But maybe the extra time and experimentation will make George better in the end. Maybe we’ll look back and see that it was all leading in the right direction.
Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George stands for the national anthem before a game against the Dallas Mavericks held at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 30,| Isaac Hale, Deseret News