Copyright Salt Lake Tribune
1. What the Jazz might gain from the team’s new practice facility The Jazz announced Tuesday that they’ll be moving the team’s practice facility away from Salt Lake City and to Sandy’s Shops at South Town. Having been to many of them around the league, the Jazz’s practice facility was already one of the best in the NBA. (Want to see a bad practice facility? Denver’s only has one court.) And when asked, none of Ryan Smith, Austin Ainge, and Will Hardy could point to something that a new facility could or would have that the Zions Bank Basketball Campus doesn’t currently. But what it will have is proximity to the Mammoth, and the nascent Smith Entertainment Group’s new offices. For those reasons, it makes sense for Jazz ownership to do this. From an on-court perspective, it likely doesn’t matter. Still, that experience can be additive. What the Jazz and Mammoth head coaches said about how that might impact their teams was reflective of their personalities. Hardy talked about the fact that he felt the teams being together could help players “build a community outside of our team” with “people that have some shared experience” as professional athletes. We’ve seen some crossover there, for example, as Lauri Markkanen befriends Finnish hockey players, or how former Jazzman Bojan Bogdanovic and former Real Salt Lake captain Damir Kreilach were great friends. Tourigny, meanwhile, discussed what he learned from the Jazz’s logistical approach: “how they organize their day, how they organize their practice, all the work on their tactics versus individual skills.” It was that aspect that interested me most as well. After Tuesday morning’s announcement, I stuck around for the Mammoth’s morning skate in Sandy. It was open to media, and it was interesting to see how little they focused on their team’s game plan for the night’s contest and how much more attention was paid to player and team skills when compared to the NBA morning shootarounds I’ve been able to see. Likewise, that the practice was open at all was notable, and the Mammoth will allow youth hockey to take place on their ice as well, starting this winter. (RSL allows youth and even adult leagues on their fields, too — I’ve played at the team’s practice facility a half-dozen times even as an awful amateur soccer player.) That idea would be nearly unheard of in the NBA, but I wonder, and hope, that there are ways the Jazz’s new facility can be part of the community in a real way. 2. Ace Bailey’s availability and personality First of all, the boring news: Ace Bailey has been listed as questionable for Wednesday night’s opener against the L.A. Clippers. He’s not questionable due to the tendonitis in his knees that caused him to miss the second half of the Jazz’s final preseason game, though. He’s questionable due to illness. Apparently, he missed multiple practices over the weekend due to the flu — Jusuf Nurkic confirmed as much in his interviews Monday — but he was healthy enough to attend the Jazz’s practice facility unveiling Tuesday morning. Overall, my read is that I expect him to play, barring a sudden turn for the worse, but his minutes could be restricted by the after-effects. We’ll see. Speaking of the unveiling, Bailey was there and was being his youthful self. I happened to be seated behind him and the other Jazz players at the event. At one point, Hardy got up and gave a short speech. After he sat down in front of Ace, the 19-year-old pulled what Hardy later called the “wrong shoulder tap bit” — Bailey got Hardy to look over the wrong shoulder to see who had tapped him there, causing a few seconds of confusion before Bailey gave up the goose via laughter. This is obviously very silly, but it’s a good microcosm of everything I’ve seen and heard from Bailey so far. When his phone went off during one press conference, he tossed it across the room to make sure it didn’t disturb proceedings further. He’s always joking and laughing with his teammates on something or another. In other words, he seems, more than any other Jazz player in recent memory, like a big goofball. That’s a good thing, though, something the Jazz have been clear to repeat over and over again. “I’m just excited for our fan base to get to know him and the rest of our group,“ Hardy said. ”I think there’s a lot of really bright, fun personalities on our team that also have this very serious side to them when they’re in between the lines.” 3. Walker Kessler: passing big man? A lot of times, when centers (of the non-Nikola Jokic variety, anyway) accumulate a lot of assists, they tend to be lame ones. Perfunctory dribble-handoffs or offensive rebounding kickouts are the kinds of assists you or I could make without even practicing with the Jazz: It’s just giving the ball to a teammate. This wasn’t the case for most of Walker Kessler’s eight assists on Thursday against Portland, though; at least six of his eight total credited assists were honest-to-goodness very good passes, requiring timing and skill! Kessler couldn’t ever remember if he had ever accumulated eight assists in a game before. He certainly hasn’t in NBA regular season or collegiate action, where his career highs are six and four, respectively. But if he were able to do this consistently, it would do wonders for the Jazz’s offense, which desperately wants to run through a pivot big man. This allows the Jazz to get the ball in the hands of their best players where they’re most dangerous, either heading towards the basket or popping open from three. Handling this so well in preseason is a very good sign, and we’ll see if more of it comes in regular season play.
