Offseason Beat: Down Goes Dante

Injuries stink. Serious offseason injuries stink even more. Dante Exum is going to miss the 2015-16 season due to a torn ACL suffered on Tuesday. The Jazz were 25-16 with Exum as the starter last year despite him not really blossoming as a scorer. He made some serious strides at Summer League, but we’ll have to wait for a year to see what he can do.

What now? Well it’s not pretty and there’s a pretty severe trickle-down effect. Trey Burke has lost a lot of his luster in the starting unit, but the Jazz almost have to play him with the ones to start the year. While on the surface a guy moving into the starting unit may seem helpful, it wasn’t for Burke. As the starter, his usage rate was 5.2 percent lower than off the bench, his effective field goal percentage was lower, and his net rating was worse by a jaw-dropping 9.8. There are other factors there, but Burke didn’t work in the starting unit while he was there. Pretty simple.

He’s just not capable of scoring on the ball. He only had a 37.7 effective field goal percentage (eFG%) on his pullup shots compared to a 54.2 eFG% on shots without a dribble. The Jazz are going to have to figure out how to play a six-foot Burke as more of a shooting guard, which actually may not be too hard. Gordon Hayward has been able to run the offense off the wing a la LeBron James. Alec Burks was also coming on as more of a facilitator before his shoulder injury last season.

As mentioned, someone’s backup usually benefits the most when the starter goes down. I’m not too sure about that and Burke has really struggled at the NBA level. He’s not a skilled enough passer to have it overshadow his on-ball issues. For fantasy, he was just No. 157 for standard leagues last season even though he played in 76 games. For non-standard, his usage rate will go down, his dime numbers shouldn’t spike much, and he doesn’t board or steal. I won’t be drafting him in any format.

After Burke, the Jazz are razor thin. It’ll be a PG2 position battle for Bryce Cotton and Raul Neto. Cotton actually showed some skill as a passer and really got into the lane whenever he wanted. The problem is that he’s even shorter than Trey Burke and can’t finish at the rim when he’s contested. For what it’s worth, Cotton finished on a high note in his last four games in the 2014-15 season, averaging 14.3 points, 2.3 boards, 2.5 assists, 0.8 steals and 0.8 treys. He’s going to need a lot ot happen to get enough run to matter in even 16-team leagues.

Neto could be a lot of fun. He’s a slash-and-dish guy and has the international style many of us love. At ACB last year, he averaging 8.9 points, 2.1 boards, 3.9 assists, 1.2 steals and 0.4 treys on 42.6 percent from the field. Neto did only make 27 percent from the field at Summer League back in 2013 and didn’t play in the 2014 and 2015 events. Basically, he’s a Brazilian Ricky Rubio with his lack of a jumper. He’s also a little taller at 6’2″ than the other Jazz point guards — having your tallest point guard being 6’2″ is a problem, huh? Considering he can dime and steal more than the others, his fantasy upside is higher than Burke or Cotton. He’s a sneaky pickup in 20-team leagues.

The Jazz also have to be looking at adding a point guard. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, but plenty of teams have a point guard on the block and the Jazz are potentially a playoff team. The Jazz have a lot of ball-handlers on their team, though.

Hey so how about Alec Burks now? As far as pure fantasy value goes, I’d say Burks is the biggest winner from the Exum injury because we know where he should play and it should benefit him. This move should lock him into a bench role to be a combo guard and may use him at the point more. Burks did get seven minutes of playing time last season with Exum and Burke on the bench. That should be different this season out of necessity. I would draft Burks over Burke all day, but that’s more about me not liking Burke.

Burks was a letdown last year, but not for the reasons you would think. He wasn’t efficient because his strength really fell apart. Here are his shot charts from the last two seasons (2014-15 on top):

He lives at the rim and it just didn’t click last year for him. Expect that to be different and give him a look later in drafts. If your league doesn’t give decent bonuses for treys, I like him even more.

If Burks is playing more as an on-ball guard, that means there will be more minutes for Rodney Hood, who turned in a big-time run at Summer League. Hood went end-to-end a few times and was the ball-handler for PnR quite a bit, so that will be more useful sans Exum. In his two Utah Summer League games, Hood averaged 20.5 points, 7.5 boards, 2.5 assists, 1.0 steals, 0.5 blocks and 0.5 treys on 54.8 percent from the field.

Honestly, the talent is there and we just have to worry about him being healthy. He has a shoulder injury right now, but it’s not expected to be a problem for long. Hood’s plantar fasciitis was a big issue on multiple occasions, but he also had ankle, hip and concussion issues.

The upside is there for fantasy. In his last 17 games, he posted No. 65 per-game value in standard leagues. Moving Burks in and Exum out is probably a slight downgrade to his value, but the improvement in his second season should go a long way. He’s a sneaky late-round target for sure.

As for Rudy Gobert, Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward, they should be in for big seasons. I love Gobert and can see taking him at the end of the first round. The Jazz are going to yield a lot of fantasy value, especially if they speed things up.

No Longer a Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing?

The offseason developments with the Wolves are interesting. That’ll happen when a team gets the top pick in the draft, of course. Karl-Anthony Towns is one of the best prospects to come in the NBA for fantasy in years and his Summer League really showed his ceiling. Yeah, he had some fouling issues, but he absolutely has the chance to be a top-five fantasy asset in the next five seasons. In case you missed it and are wondering why, check out the Summer League recap about him. Tons of stuff.

He said it was 13 weeks from surgery to get his walking boot off. “[My ankle] was something that was bothering me the last few years and I was trying to solve the problem in many different ways, but [the surgery] was something I really needed to do,” Pekovic said. “I saw a few doctors who all gave the same opinion, they all said surgery and hopefully I’ll be pain free.” He also said he is looking forward to playing with Towns, but it “depends when I’m coming back.” Coach Flip Saunders said Pek is “still hurt.” I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out until the 2016 part of the season. Don’t draft him.

Switching back to Towns, the Wolves in Summer League made it clear the minutes will be there. They played him for 10-minute stints to help work on his stamina because he was in a platoon at Kentucky last year. Towns was a bit tired at first, but he really started to round into form as the week went on from a conditioning standpoint. Once he gets the confidence from his coaches and keeps his fouling down, we should be seeing him play long stretches.

So what can we expect from Towns for playing time? He can play the four or the five, so the Wolves have 96 minutes available. Even when KG and Pek are healthy, those guys are not going to play more than a combined 40 minutes in a game. Gorgui Dieng will probably be around 25, and I doubt Adreian Payne or Anthony Bennett will play when Pek and KG are both active. The Wolves may also play Andrew Wiggins or Shabazz Muhammad at the four — Muhammad more likely and will definitely play there. Based on that, those others account for around 73 minutes, so 23 minutes is a pretty solid floor. That should get closer to 30 once KG has to shut it down and it will be just a matter of time before Pek goes down. KAT should have lots of life in nine-cat. Nine lives?

As mentioned, Wiggins should get some playing time at the four. This could allow the Wolves to insert a better shooter on the wing because Wiggins isn’t ready to be making 1.0 treys per game just yet. Again, the problem is the Wolves don’t have a 3-point shooter on their roster besides Kevin Martin. Maybe that means we see Kevin Martin at the three, too. He did play at the three next to guys like Rubio, LaVine, Gary Neal and Mo Williams, so it could happen. Plus, Flip even used Chase Budinger at the four with those smaller lineups, so we definitely could see a Rubio-LaVine-Martin-Wiggins-Towns lineup. That should be a blast to watch!

Another fun item is coach Flip Saunders striking back on Twitter for his team coming in last for 3-pointers last year. “I love 3 pointers,” Saunders tweeted on Sunday. “We have to shoot and will.” There are a lot of ways to describe how much the Wolves need a trey last year. They were last and it wasn’t close. My favorite way is saying Stephen Curry in the Western Conference Playoffs and the Wolves against Western Conference teams last year both had the same 3-pointers per game: 4.9.

We have to give Flip the benefit of the doubt, though. Andrew Wiggins doesn’t have a trey yet and the Wolves just don’t have the shooters. The problem is that they didn’t add anything to improve. They really, really wanted Zach LaVine to expand his range at Summer League, but it just isn’t happening yet. He launched a ton of pullup jumpers and many of them were not close. There is almost no chance they can climb into the top 20.

Let’s wrap this up about one of my favorite players for the upcoming season in C.J. McCollum: Draft him.

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