Camp Opens With Fewer Guards Than Utah Planned On

Trey Alexander was stretcheted off a summer league floor in mid-July. Jamir Watkins tore his ACL shortly after and is expected to miss most of the coming season. That's two backcourt bodies gone before a single training camp rep has been taken, and it lands on a team that was already thin behind its starters.

The Jazz head into camp leaning on Keyonte George, Isaiah Collier, and the No. 2 pick out of Kansas to carry the guard load. That's a young trio, and the optimistic read is that the minutes are there for all of them to grow into. The less optimistic read is that there's almost nothing behind them. Svi Mykhailiuk and Walter Clayton Jr. round out the returners with meaningful experience, and Utah added a pair of perimeter players in late July — a former UNC forward and a Wisconsin wing prospect — to patch the gaps. Neither arrives with a guaranteed role.

What makes this awkward is that the backcourt depth issue wasn't supposed to be the problem. The front office spent the summer building toward a guard-heavy future, drafting at No. 2 and pairing that pick with two young playmakers who both shot efficiently last season. The injuries compressed the margin for error before the plan had a chance to breathe. My read is that George and Collier will be fine — both showed last year they can handle real minutes — but the Jazz need both of them healthy and available in a way they haven't always been.

The schedule is out, training camp is close, and Utah will figure out what it has. It just has less of it than expected.