Utah Jazz have ‘assembled one of the best young cores’

The Charlotte Hornets tried to steal swingman Gordon Hayward away from the Utah Jazz in the offseason, signing him to a giant offer sheet. The Jazz, however, decided to match and retain Hayward with their young core that includes point guard Trey Burke, big man Derrick Favors and the fourth overall pick of this year’s draft, Dante Exum, among others.

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According to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders, the Utah Jazz have assembled one of the league’s best young cores.

"Over the offseason, I stated that the Jazz have assembled one of the best young cores in the NBA with talented players like Trey Burke, Dante Exum, Derrick Favors, Gordon Hayward, Enes Kanter, Alec Burks, Rudy Gobert and Rodney Hood. I stand by that statement and believe that the future is very bright for the Jazz. It’ll be interesting to see how new head coach Quin Snyder uses Exum and Burke in the backcourt, and how all of the pieces will come together. But there’s no doubt that Utah has the talent in place to be a very good team in several years. In the meantime, they just need to keep developing their young players and giving them experience. They probably won’t win many games in the 2014-15 season, but they should show some improvement and take a step in the right direction. Then, they’ll add yet another lottery talent in next year’s draft and pretty soon we should be talking about Utah as a team that can make noise in the Western Conference."

Kennedy is right that the Jazz will be in the lottery for another year and only time will tell how some of their players like Burke and Exum will develop and if they will be able to play in the back court together. Gobert’s recent performance in the FIBA World Cup – he was excellent in France’s upset victory over Spain in the quarterfinals – gives the Jazz high hopes for him as well.

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