The Utah Jazz may not be great this season but it’ll be exciting to see the young players on the team develop. Keyonte George, Cody Williams, and the other rookies and sophomores deservingly will get a lot of the attention, but the undrafted 3rd year LA native, Johnny Juzang, could be positioned to have a break-out season.

Juzang has spent the last couple of seasons predominantly with the SLC Stars and has been great primarily due to his lights out shooting. While Juzang had glimpses of scoring potential his rookie season when he got NBA minutes, he really proved his scoring prowess in his 20 games with the Jazz last season. His last season per 36 minutes stats were 13.9 PPG on 0.416% from 3, 4.7 rebounds, and 3 assists.

Juzang has not been one of the first few players off the bench this preseason but he still has been fantastic as his shooting looks better than ever. In the first 2 preseason games he is 7 of 9 from 3, including a 30 footer and is averaging 15.5 points in 15 minutes (more points per minutes played so far!). Juzang has looked like a solid defender, ball handler, and distributor in this preseason as well. This is a small sample size and the competition have not all been NBA teams, but his impressive play so far lines up with his performance to end last season.

Johnny Juzang deserves minutes due to his continually improved play, continuity with Will Hardy’s system, and he is also one of the young guys on the team so he could be a part of the future. Juzang is 23 (he can be expected to keep improving for the next few seasons), he is 6’7, weighs 215 lbs, can shoots lights out and is decent everywhere else. That recipe sounds like a good bench contributor who can fill in as a starter as needed for the next several seasons. Juzang does not have all-star potential like Keyonte George and Cody Williams but he does have an NBA body and an NBA skill set. He shouldn’t be stashed away in the G-League again but should be a Jazz rotation player from game 1 of the 2024-2025 season. Juzang is more NBA ready than other young guys on the team and should be playing Jazz minutes, even if that means other young guys like Collier, Filipowski, and Sensabaugh spend time in the G-League to start the season. What do you think? Comment Below!