Jazz Will Be ‘Extremely Dangerous’ When Conley Finds His Shot
Oct 30, 2019, 1:50 PM | Updated: 1:55 pm
Mike Conley #10 of the Utah Jazz warms up beofre a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder at Vivint Smart Home Arena on October 23, 2019 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)
(Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Mike Conley, one of the newest and most anticipated Jazzmen, is off to an ice-cold start this season, but when he finds his shot, the Jazz will be dangerous to any opponent they face.
Against the Phoenix Suns he scored just a single point and missed all seven shots from the field. For the season, Conley is shooting 20 percent from the field and averaging 7.8 points per game.
Luckily for Conley, the Jazz are off to a hot start on defense. The team is 3-1 on the year which is masking his poor play.
— Mike Conley (@MCONLEY10) October 30, 2019
He has converted 44 percent of his shots over his NBA career, so the 20 percent he is on right now will likely turn around.
If the Jazz were losing games, there would be a lot of finger-pointing at Conley, predicted KSL Unrivaled, a nightly sports radio show hosted by Scott Mitchell and Alex Kirry.
The duo not overly concerned – yet. They think he will turn it around but wonder why this is even happening to the veteran guard.
“The offense has been producing a lot less than some might have hoped. Mike Conley is the principle of that and I wonder what Mike Conley is doing,” Kirry said. “He was 0 for 7 against the Suns, this is a guy who has been struggling over the first four games.”
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Jazz fans can’t be happy about Conley’s start to the season. He has a career scoring average of 15 points per game, and he is half of that through four games this year.
“If you are a Jazz fan you can’t help but feel he is in his own head a little bit. This is a guy who has 13 years of experience in the league and he has been consistent,” Kirry added. “He comes to the Jazz and people are wondering what is going on here.”
The Silver Lining
Imagine what it will do for the already successful Jazz once Conley gets in the neighborhood of his career average 15 points per game.
Conley’s numbers were likely to go down with the Jazz because he is no longer the team’s top scoring option – that spot belongs to Donovan Mitchell.
Bojan Bogdanovic has made an immediate impact on the Jazz! #TakeNotehttps://t.co/MzpLtAH1WX
— KSL Sports (@kslsports) October 29, 2019
Conley is talented enough to get to double-digits most nights and shoot around 45 percent from the field.
The other half of Unrivaled, Scott Mitchell, believes Conley will come around and once he does the Utah Jazz will be a serious contender in the Western Conference.
“I am that fan who would say, ‘Mike Conley is just terrible,’ but I am actually saying ‘no, this is really good.’ This is good for this reason – Bojan is better than average and Donovan Mitchell is playing better and most of the parts are playing better,” Mitchell said.
“The Jazz are finding ways to win games, so when Mike Conley finds himself it will be found points. Games that are now close they will win easily. He will find it, I have all the confidence in the world and he will be the cherry on top of all of this.”
Maybe Conley gets going against the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night or maybe it’s still a few weeks away but as long as the Jazz are winning games his scoring issues will not be a problem. They will become a problem if the Jazz start losing games and Conley is scoring fewer than 10 points per game.
Tune into KSL UnRivaled every Monday through Friday, 7-9 p.m., or download the KSL NewsRadio app to subscribe to the podcast.
