As we continue to wind our way through eliminated playoff teams and evaluate the prospects of their pending free agents, we arrive at the Utah Jazz. Will anyone from their roster end up with the Timberwolves next season?
The Utah Jazz finally made the mini-leap that the basketball world had been expecting from them each of the last couple years, going from 38 wins in 2014-15 to 40 wins a year ago, to a 51-31 record in 2016-17.
Head coach Quin Snyder has done a great job with his young roster, led by Gordon Hayward and Rudy Gobert. This year, the Jazz earned the fifth seed in the Western Conference and defeated the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the playoffs before being swept by the Golden State Warriors in the second round.
The Jazz’ free-agents-to-be don’t include Hayward, Gobert, or or Derrick Favors, but new point guard George Hill, whom Utah traded for in the off-season, will already be hitting the open market. Plus, bench pieces Shelvin Mack and Jeff Withey will also be unrestricted free agents and Joe Ingles will test the market in restricted free agency.
Let’s take a look at whether or not any of these players could be options for Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota.
George Hill
Hill spent the first four years of his career in a San Antonio Spurs uniform before being traded to the Indiana Pacers in the infamous 2011 draft night trade that brought Kawhi Leonard to the state of Texas. After five years in Indianapolis, Hill was shipped west to Utah in a three-team trade that sent Jeff Teague to the Pacers.
Hill was, in many ways, a missing piece for the Jazz, who stumbled to just 40 wins the year prior with a combination of Raul Neto and Shelvin Mack starting at point guard. With the addition of the veteran Hill, Indiana win 11 more games with an otherwise similar roster to the year before.
The fifth-overall selection from the 2014 NBA Draft, Dante Exum, returned to the rotation last season after missing all of 2015-16 due to injury. While he’s theoretically at full speed and could be the starting point guard of the future for the Jazz, Exum has provided mixed results at the NBA level and only played 18.6 minutes per game over 66 contests in 2016-17.
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Therefore, Hill is an asset that the Jazz will strongly consider bringing back; front office boss Dennis Lindsay alluded to this in his end-of-season press conference.
While Hill had arguably the best season of his eight-year career, he only played in 49 games due to injury and will be playing his age-31 season in 2017-18. He’s one of the better point guards to have never made an All-Star team and will surely receive plenty of interest from contending teams throughout the league.
It would be a surprise if the Wolves are one of them, however, as some combination of Ricky Rubio and Kris Dunn appear to the point guard(s) of the future in Minneapolis. Plus, Hill has never been known as more than an average defensive point guard and it’s tough to see him being the style of player that Thibs would want to deploy.
Verdict: Hill is a great player and would make the Timberwolves better if he were added via free agency. But the cost it will take to acquire a 31-year-old at a position that isn’t a major need won’t be worth it for Minnesota.
Shelvin Mack
Mack is a curious case, as he’s bounced around to four different organizations over a six-year career and found himself playing in the playoffs in four different seasons, but has never really proven himself to be anything more than a fringey role player in the NBA.
Mack appeared in 55 regular season games for the Jazz and nine of 11 playoff games this season, even starting three playoff games when George Hill was injured. He attempted a third of his shots from beyond the arc and only hit on 30.8 percent of them and is just a career 32.1 percent shooter from three-point range.
It’s a case of a backup point guard who shoots too much without making enough shots, as the assist and turnover rates aren’t great, either.
Verdict: There would be no reason for the Wolves to add a mediocre backup point guard to a group that already includes Rubio, Dunn, and third-year man Tyus Jones.
Jeff Withey
Twenty-seven-year-old center Jeff Withey was an early second-round pick (drafted by Portland and traded to New Orleans later in the summer) in the 2013 NBA Draft and has never played more 700 minutes in a season as a professional — less than he played in each of his last two seasons at the University of Kansas.
When Withey has played, however, he’s been a downright solid backup big man. He’s a limited, short minutes guy, of course; Withey has averaged 10.3 minutes per game while playing an average of just over 49 games per year in his career. But when he plays, he’s an outstanding offensive rebounder and a solid source of production in the paint.
The Timberwolves, however, have plenty of big men. Even beyond Karl-Anthony Towns and Gorgui Dieng, the bench is chock-full with the likes of Nemanja Bjelica, Cole Aldrich, and Jordan Hill.
Withey has some redundancies with both Aldrich and Hill, and while the latter could easily be let go by Minnesota this summer, it’s hard to see why the Wolves would feel the need to employ both Aldrich and Withey. Withey, after all, is somewhat of a poor man’s version of his fellow Kansas alum, albeit with better production than Cole had this past season.
Verdict: The Wolves could do worse when adding an end-of-the-bench big man, but as long as Aldrich (and Hill, for that matter) are still on the roster, this addition wouldn’t make any sense.
Joe Ingles
Ingles will be 30 years old prior to the start of the regular season this fall and will be hitting free agency for the first time. As a restricted free agent, the Jazz will have an opportunity to match any offer sheets that Ingles signs.
The Australian didn’t join the NBA until he was 27 years of age but has consistently improved over his three years of play in the U.S. Over his NBA career, Ingles has attempted 63 percent of his shots from three-point range, hitting at above league-average each season but knocking down an impressive 44.1 percent of his attempts in 2016-17. Additionally, Ingles played in all 82 games and launched 3.4 threes per contest.
Ingles has played the majority of his NBA minutes at small forward, although his ball-handling skills allow him to play some two and a bit of point forward. He isn’t a very good rebounder, however, making it somewhat difficult to deploy him as a stretch-four.
While a much more consistent outside shooter and being a better play-maker than Bjelica, Ingles is nowhere near the rebounder and even the defender as the Timberwolves’ current version of a point forward/stretch-four.
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Verdict: Ingles is an all-around better player than Bjelica and only one year older, but he’ll also no doubt command more in salary on the (semi) open market. Don’t expect the Wolves to pony up what it would take to land the restricted free agent, especially given his shortcomings both defensively and on the boards.