Putting Dante Exum into perspective

[Crunch 99]

Yeah, him having practically one speed is a problem. There is indeed no nuance in his game. He either goes fast or he doesn't go and there is very little that's not straight line.

Harpring said that the coaching staff is now directing the other Jazz players to watch and try to learn from Joe Ingles, who gets to the rim in relatively slow motion with patience, and still manages to come up with a good look at the basket, or an assist to Rudy or Favs when a big man comes over to help guard him.

[KqWIN]

Yeah, him having practically one speed is a problem. There is indeed no nuance in his game. He either goes fast or he doesn't go and there is very little that's not straight line.

Harpring said that the coaching staff is now directing the other Jazz players to watch and try to learn from Joe Ingles, who gets to the rim in relatively slow motion with patience, and still manages to come up with a good look at the basket, or an assist to Rudy or Favs when a big man comes over to help guard him.

What’s been puzzling to me is that he seemed to have Ingles esque finishing last season, but now it’s gone. I don’t know what happened.

Something I think he should also work on is dropping his shoulder and creating contact. It seems to me that a lot of his misses come from trying to be to cute around the basket and rely on his touch. When he puts his body into the defender he has more success because he can either bully his defender under the hoop or get FT’s.

He also doesn’t have to completely speed past guys. One of the reasons I think he misses is because he’s going too fast. He’s big enough to finish around his defender if he gets there. He should slow down even if it means his defender catches up, because it’s easier to finish over them when he’s controlled than if he’s going 100 mph.

[eLo]

i like what i see from Ex lately, ok he still is terrible shooter often play to chaotic, but on his own way he can delivered, he gain some confidence, if he will only stay healthy i think he could even take starting position if Ricki will be gonne

[tleikheen]

Garbage time we get to see Exum with the ball...he becomes the fastest most athletic player on the court and he plays really good.

The other times he has to let DM and Ingles walk the ball up the court while he goes to the deep corner as a decoy.

We get to see where he can succeed and be really good and we get to see where he's stuck in a offense that minimizes his opportunity for success in the same game .

As the season goes on the Jazz look more and more unathletic to the teams there playing against and we're stuck watching a team who we can't guess which team is going to show up night after night. A team who plays really good together one night or a team that gets overwhelmed and buried by a team more ready for todays rules that favor faster and more athletic play.

[BarneyGumble]

Garbage time we get to see Exum with the ball...he becomes the fastest most athletic player on the court and he plays really good.

The other times he has to let DM and Ingles walk the ball up the court while he goes to the deep corner as a decoy.

We get to see where he can succeed and be really good and we get to see where he's stuck in a offense that minimizes his opportunity for success in the same game .

As the season goes on the Jazz look more and more unathletic to the teams there playing against and we're stuck watching a team who we can't guess which team is going to show up night after night. A team who plays really good together one night or a team that gets overwhelmed and buried by a team more ready for todays rules that favor faster and more athletic play.

You know what your analysis sounds like to me? It sounds like he plays well in garbage time, and doesn’t play well with or against other quality NBA players. Do you know what that means that he is? That means that he is a garbage time player on a $33mm contract. Lucky him.

[BarneyGumble]

i like what i see from Ex lately, ok he still is terrible shooter often play to chaotic, but on his own way he can delivered, he gain some confidence, if he will only stay healthy i think he could even take starting position if Ricki will be gonne

The day Dante Exum is a full-time starter for the Utah Jazz at point guard is a day you can be sure that we will be getting a top three lottery pick that Year

[outerspacefella]

- Exum is not resposible for the contract Jazz offered, so I won't bear that against him (I'll find a way to bear it against someone else when I get pissed off as a fan... not that it will matter a darn thing though!)
- I won't be betting on Exum being Jazz starting PG any time soon, and it won't be Snyder's fault

[eLo]

i like what i see from Ex lately, ok he still is terrible shooter often play to chaotic, but on his own way he can delivered, he gain some confidence, if he will only stay healthy i think he could even take starting position if Ricki will be gonne

The day Dante Exum is a full-time starter for the Utah Jazz at point guard is a day you can be sure that we will be getting a top three lottery pick that Year

so any way we gonna win on that

[BarneyGumble]

i like what i see from Ex lately, ok he still is terrible shooter often play to chaotic, but on his own way he can delivered, he gain some confidence, if he will only stay healthy i think he could even take starting position if Ricki will be gonne

The day Dante Exum is a full-time starter for the Utah Jazz at point guard is a day you can be sure that we will be getting a top three lottery pick that Year

so any way we gonna win on that

Haha yes. As soon as we are ready to blow it up and rebuild we can turn the keys over to Exum

[sipclip]

Hopefully the Exum that we have seen these last few games is the Exum that we see most games. When he slows down a little and doesn't get out of control he brings a lot positives to this basketball team.

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[BudTugly]

Using his left hand is helping him.

[tleikheen]

Exum in perspective as of Christmas Day …..disappointing ….the X factor is still timid and defers to DM ,Ingles when out on the court. Snyder holds him back still but a more mature Exum would grab the minutes and do more with it when on the court.
Jazz from game 1 have had minutes for another scorer and yet Exum for all is speed doesn't attack the basket going downhill ….still taking his eyes off the basket and missing easy layups.

If Exum could play with abandon with his obvious physical talents maybe DM wouldn't be struggling so badly.
Exum doesn't have any excuses this year if he doesn't seize the opportunity and stop deferring to all his team mates .Time to step up for Exum or Jazz will know he can't be counted on.

[ForeverRDjazz]

Exum in perspective as of Christmas Day …..disappointing ….the X factor is still timid and defers to DM ,Ingles when out on the court. Snyder holds him back still but a more mature Exum would grab the minutes and do more with it when on the court.
Jazz from game 1 have had minutes for another scorer and yet Exum for all is speed doesn't attack the basket going downhill ….still taking his eyes off the basket and missing easy layups.

If Exum could play with abandon with his obvious physical talents maybe DM wouldn't be struggling so badly.
Exum doesn't have any excuses this year if he doesn't seize the opportunity and stop deferring to all his team mates .Time to step up for Exum or Jazz will know he can't be counted on.

Pretty darn good tonight. 17 points 20 minutes. Great D with some nice passes? Counted on? Remember playing pretty freaking good D on last years MVP Harden. Kid has came long way from his rookie years. Jazz will make playoffs if the keep playing like their last 5 games. Love what i'm seeing from Ex lately.

[babyjax13]

Exum in perspective as of Christmas Day …..disappointing ….the X factor is still timid and defers to DM ,Ingles when out on the court. Snyder holds him back still but a more mature Exum would grab the minutes and do more with it when on the court.
Jazz from game 1 have had minutes for another scorer and yet Exum for all is speed doesn't attack the basket going downhill ….still taking his eyes off the basket and missing easy layups.

If Exum could play with abandon with his obvious physical talents maybe DM wouldn't be struggling so badly.
Exum doesn't have any excuses this year if he doesn't seize the opportunity and stop deferring to all his team mates .Time to step up for Exum or Jazz will know he can't be counted on.

His last 5 games he has been much more under control. The entire team is turning a corner, but Exum especially has been better.

[stitches]

On today's issue of #CherryPickThatStat:

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[sipclip]

For me it is like a roller coaster when it comes to Exum. He has those ups that are so exciting and get dreaming of what the future can be and then he has another stretch where he just craters and looks awful for a bunch of games and has you wondering if he can even stay in the league. The key is that Quin makes it a major priority to try to let him play through those bad stretches rather than benching him so that hopefully with more experience those stretches become less and less frequent. As this team is currently constructed Exum is pretty much our only hope when it comes to taking that next step because we have so few players with upside potential. If Exum can turn into a solid 12pt, 5ast, 3rb guard with elite defense then it changes the trajectory of this team significantly.

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[Daddy 801]

Haven’t looked at any numbers or stats. But the past few games I’ve liked what I’ve seen from Dante. I love that he has been finishing with his left hand. Hope he can keep it up.

[tleikheen]

Finishing with his left hand and putting in floaters ,the repertoire is growing and used in games now

[babyjax13]

I've been thinking a lot about Dante Exum - who he is as a player, and where he is in his career. Especially, what kind of progression can we expect from him?

Age (compared to seniors in 2018 NBA draft)
DeVonte' Grahm: 23 years, 241 days
Dante Exum: 23 years, 100 days
Jevon Carter: 23 years, 37 days
Grayson Allen: 23 years, 13 days
Chandler Hutchison: 22 years, 178 days
Svi Mykhailiuk: 21 years, 133 days

Dante is still around the same age as several rookies, and he's had 5 years of learning from NBA coaches. Generally it's hoped that seniors will be productive NBA players, so were Dante drafted this year the expectation would be that he can contribute usefully to a rotation and would still have some upside left.

Progression
It's a bit hard to track progression. I've normalized his first several years to 20 minutes per game.
PER 20 is used because he's been either slightly below or slightly above 20mpg each year and it's pretty reasonable to expect that the statistics would scale. Obviously there are sample size issues with Dante's injury history.

Rookie year: 35/31/65 shooting, 4.8p 1.4r 2.2a .45s .18b 1.26to 1.62f ... .4 FTA
Year 2: 43/30/80 shooting, 6.7p 2.15r 1.82a .322s .22b 1.29t0 2.37f ... 1.1 FTA
Year 3: 48/28/81 shooting, 9.64p 2.26r 3.69a .714s .238b 1.67to 1.67f ... 2.2 FTA

Everything looks pretty promising here. Reasonable progression every year. Scoring efficiency has improved, scoring more points, assist to turnover ratio took a big jump last season. Points/20 have increased by 1.9 each season, rebounds/minute remain about static, steals have fluctuated, blocks have improved marginally, and FTA have doubled each season.

This is completely unscientific, but if we expect a similar trend of improvement to continue, we should see something around

Bad projection
48/30/80 shooting, 11.7p 2.3r 3a .7s .23b 1.6to 1.6pf ... 4 FTA

For reference, here is what he looks like two games in:
57/50/73 shooting, 11.8p 2.72r 1.8a 0s 0b .9to .9pf ... 5 FTA

Some things are going to normalize, and his role has changed so I don't expect a large increase in assists like last season (I expect a small regression from last year), but in this tiny sample size and from the eye test the expected progression seems pretty achievable.

Not sure what this does for people, but as long as he progresses reasonably Dante is definetely worth his contract, and there is always the possibility of a large jump at some point (he still has potential). But I'm not banking on him becoming a star, instead I see a fairly elite perimeter defender who isn't a negative on offense. That's a valuable thing - and puts him as pretty solidly one of the 10 best players in the 2014 class (but not top 5).

Update, Dante in December, again translated to per20.

Raw stats: 53/30/79 shooting, 14.2 mpg, 7.1p 1.1r 2.6a .5s 0b 1.1TO ... 2 FTA
per20: 53/30/79, 10ppg 1.5rpg 3.7apg .7s 0b 1.5TO ... 2.8FTA

November was a rough month, but October and December have looked promising, and I think his stats will normalize more-or-less to something similar to the bad projection above, although with less freethrow attempts and more assists.

[tleikheen]

Dante is playing exclusively at PG when Rubio sits and every game now he's throwing dunks down which you never see Rubio do and hardly ever see Mitchell do this year. Both Dante's dunks were going downhill when he went up ,he even went up on Embiid.
This isn't all he's doing …..he shook his man and took a jumper from the 3 pt line ,he didn't make it but he took it with confidence. Floaters are showing up in his offensive arsenal and he's making them.
Clearly Snyder's leash is off Exum finally. Being allowed to attack and shoot 3's from where he prefers (top of the key as opposed to the corner ) is letting Exum grow his confidence on the court.
Jazzfanz are so use to seeing the Snyder type player (grinders,hustlers,non athletic "intelligent" players) that Exum can't make mistakes or play through his mistakes without calling him a bust.
Jazz aren't going far with Rubio running the show ,he has athletic limitations and is getting by on savvy and experience. He'd be a good 3rd guard .Exum is going to make athletic mistakes but every game now his speed and athleticism are being used more wisely and the Jazz might be witnessing the needed scorer blossom right now in Exum.