Utah Jazz: Evaluating Grayson Allen’s rookie season so far

With the 2018-19 NBA regular season over the halfway mark, let’s take a look and evaluate the rookie campaign of Utah Jazz guard Grayson Allen thus far.

One of the more interesting prospects coming out of college and entering the NBA before the 2018 NBA Draft was Duke guard Grayson Allen.

Along with having a unique personality and stirring up some controversy with his extracurricular activities between plays on the floor in college, many around the league had their eye on Allen and where he would end up as he made the next step to the NBA.

As the draft began, Allen was passed up by all of the lottery teams, sliding into the middle of the first round where he was ultimately selected with the 21st overall pick by the Utah Jazz.

With the 2018-19 NBA season officially across the midway point, it’s time to take a look at Allen’s time in Salt Lake City so far and evaluate how he has performed this year in his rookie campaign.

So far this season, Allen has had somewhat of a quite year while dealing with some injury issues along the way, but he’s shown flashes of what could be and how he could contribute in Utah as his pro career continues to progress.

Allen started off the year with a solid showing in NBA Summer League before the regular season officially began, which allowed Jazz fans and fans around the NBA their first look at the rookie.

In Las Vegas, Allen appeared in two games while averaging 16.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists during that span. He also appeared in two games in Utah Summer League, where he averaged 10.0 points, 7.5 assists and 7.0 rebounds per game.

When the regular season kicked off, Allen’s production on offense appeared to have carried over to some extent.

Allen ended up getting some early season minutes mainly off the bench, appearing in eight of the first 10 games while averaging 5.0 points and 0.4 assists in 11.2 minutes per game. That stretch was highlighting by an 11-point performance against the Dallas Mavericks on Oct. 28, where he also recorded a plus/minus of +17.

After that span to open the year, the 23-year-old rookie went on to have a quiet stretch in the middle of the season, playing in just nine NBA contests from the beginning of November up until the middle of January.

Part of the reasoning behind that was due to him moving up and down from the NBA to the G League, while the other part was due to the ankle injury he’s had to overcome of late.

Since he has returned from his recent injury, Allen has made his way back to the floor for the Jazz as they begin to pick up steam in the second half of the regular season.

Heading into Monday night’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers, Allen has come off the bench for Utah in its last four games, where he’s averaged 4.7 points, 1.3 assists and 0.6 rebounds in 12.9 minutes per contest.

Overall this season, Allen has made a total of 21 appearances while averaging 4.6 points, 0.7 assists and 0.3 rebounds a night. He’s struggled shooting the ball throughout his rookie year, shooting 32.2 percent from the field, 28.1 percent from 3 and 76.7 percent from the foul line.

Those numbers still aren’t eye-opening or game-changing, but the fact that Allen is healthy and back on the court is a positive sign for the Jazz.

When it comes to evaluating Grayson Allen’s production in his rookie year, it has been a relatively quiet season and one that has been fairly incomplete, in part because the year is obviously not over. It feels like we haven’t had a large enough sample size yet to properly evaluate his overall performance.

Even with the small sample size of performances we’ve been able to see from Allen, he has shown a few flashes of what could be and how he could end up being a nice complementary piece in Utah as his NBA career continues.