Utah Jazz: Results of Bogdanovic/Conley decisions put on hold

The Utah Jazz made a pair of major decisions last offseason. The initial results of them now won’t be known until a much later date.

It’s been an up-and-down past calendar year for the Utah Jazz. After winning 50 games and qualifying for the Western Conference’s five-seed in the first round of the 2019 playoffs, the team was quickly dispatched in five games by the fourth-seeded Houston Rockets. That prompted a breakup with players like Ricky Rubio and Derrick Favors and welcomed unions with a pair of new members of the squad.

Last June, the Jazz sent a package of Kyle Korver, Jae Crowder, Grayson Allen and a pair of draft picks to the Memphis Grizzlies for longtime franchise staple Mike Conley. The trade was met with tremendous levels of excitement, as Conley was coming off one of the best seasons of his career. In 2018-19, he averaged 21.1 points and 6.4 assists per game while shooting 43.8 percent from the field. The expectation was that he’d step in and be a perfect backcourt partner for Donovan Mitchell.

More from Hoops Habit

Less than two months later, the second major domino fell. Utah signed forward Bojan Bogdanovic to a four-year, $73 million contract after he posted a career-best 18.0 points per game with the Indiana Pacers the season prior. The Jazz desperately needed a floor-spacing sharpshooter capable of creating his own looks, and Bogdanovic fit that description perfectly.

Before the 2019-20 NBA season was suspended, Quin Snyder’s team held a one-game lead on the West’s No. 4 seed. Just a game-and-a-half behind the Denver Nuggets, who knows what could’ve been possible.

Mitchell had improved his play just enough to lead a potent offense and Rudy Gobert remained a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. Things seemed to be shaping up quite well for a playoff run.

Then Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. Mitchell followed suit, sparking rumors of controversy that have since been extinguished. It appears that both the players and the organization are ready to move on, although it was a scary time to be a Jazz fan for a few weeks.

If the Utah Jazz take the floor again this season, it will be without their second-leading scorer. Bogdanovic has undergone season-ending wrist surgery, which comes as a significant blow to the team. Not only was the 31-year-old forward averaging 20.2 points per game, but he was canning 41.4 percent of his 3-point attempts and converting at a 90.3 percent clip at the free-throw line. His presence as the secondary scoring option behind Mitchell will be sorely missed.

Additionally, the Conley experiment has gone about as poorly as one could’ve anticipated in year one. Amidst missing time due to injury and even coming off the bench for a few games, the veteran point guard formerly regarded as steady has been everything but that in 2019-20. This season, Conley’s scoring just 13.8 points per game on 40.5 percent shooting from the field. He was playing much better basketball in the two weeks leading up to the suspension of the season, but his results as a whole have been underwhelming.

Bogdanovic is under contract for three more years. Conley is a near-lock to pick up his $34.5M player option for next season. While the year-one results of the Conley/Bogdanovic test will be rendered inconclusive, there’s still hope that things will turn around in due time. At 41-23, it’s pretty remarkable that Utah has been able to withstand so many injuries and a bout of inconsistency from its starting point guard.

They’ve weathered worse storms before — and we’ll find out in 2020-21 what the end result of this pairing will be.