2018 NBA free agency grades: Jazz to re-sign Raul Neto

The Utah Jazz are re-signing point guard Raul Neto to a two-year, $4.4 million deal. We grade the deal for the Jazz, and what it means for the team.

The Utah Jazz have made another move in 2018 NBA free agency, bringing back one of their own free agents, Raul Neto. According to Yahoo! Sports‘ Shams Charania, it will be a two-year, $4.4 million deal. ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported the sides had come to an agreement.

Next season will be just Neto’s fourth in the league, and he will be 26 years old when the season begins. He’s never averaged more than 6.0 points a game in a season, and his career average of 1.7 assists per game doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence. Why make the move?

Earlier, it was mentioned that Neto was just one of their free agents. The one that had yet to be re-signed at the time was restricted free agent Dante Exum, whose market had been surprisingly quiet. The Jazz wound up bringing back Exum, but even if they hadn’t, Neto is more than capable as a backup point guard.

Neto was actually Utah’s starting point guard for a short stint back in the 2015-16 season, making 53 starts for the team. He finished the season with averages of 5.9 points, 2.1 assists and 1.5 rebounds per game.

Daniel Clayton of Salt Lake City Hoops laid out how the Jazz roster looks like after the Neto re-signing, though the numbers quickly changed with the new Exum contract:

As of right now, the rotation next season would probably be the following:

• Starters: Ricky Rubio, Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, Derrick Favors, Rudy Gobert
• Bench: Dante Exum, Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale, Jae Crowder, Thabo Sefolosha*
• End of bench: Raul Neto, Tony Bradley

*coming off surgery for an avulsion in his MCL

With Exum back, Neto will surely move to the end of the bench as the third point guard role he’s played the past few seasons, which, for Utah, is not a bad thing.

I’ve stated in the past that I’m not the biggest fan of per 36 minutes numbers, but if you were to extrapolate Raul Neto’s production from this past season and give him Rubio’s minutes, Neto “would have” averaged 13.2 points, 5.4 assists and 3.5 rebounds — eerily similar to the numbers that Rubio actually averaged this past season: 13.1 points, 5.3 assists and 4.6 rebounds per game.

There are way worse things to have than a Rubio-lite as your third string point guard.

Ricky Rubio is a good point guard in this league, and had a great season in his first year with the Jazz. He played and started in 77 games, the second-highest total in both categories. Unfortunately for he and the Jazz, the postseason was a different story.

If Rubio was healthy for the series against the Houston Rockets, they probably still don’t win — the Rockets took the Warriors to seven games without Chris Paul for Games 6 and 7 of the series, after all — but the same thing ailed both point guards (hamstrings).

Rubio has had his fair share of serious injuries that have kept him off the court for considerable amounts of time, including (as already mentioned) this past series against the Rockets. Fortunately for Utah, they have a Rubio 1.0 waiting on the bench until Rubio’s contract runs out next offseason.

It’s hard to give this deal a bad grade when considering the Lakers are paying Rajon Rondo $9 million next season to come off the bench, and most of the potential targets the Jazz could have signed are already with a new team or re-signed. Raul Neto a cheap depth move, nothing more.

Next: 2018 NBA free agency tracker: Grades for every deal so far

Grade: B