30 NBA Players in 30 Days: Collin Sexton
Day 22 of our NBA season countdown brings us to the Utah Jazz to break down a comeback season for Collin Sexton. Now, this is pretty awkward. There are a couple names I was looking at for this article. The Jazz are probably the favorite to land the #1 overall pick next year to draft the young phenom out of France, Victor Wembanyama. Especially after his two games against the G League Ignite in Las Vegas last week, I’m sure the Jazz will have to compete pretty hard in order to be the worst team in the league. Since that is the barometer for success for Utah, there were a couple different players on the roster I could have chosen to focus on. Will they look to trade Mike Conley towards the deadline to really fast forward the tanking? They acquired the rookie center from Auburn, Walker Kessler, in the Gobert trade, as well as another young prospect in Nickeil Alexander-Walker last season from the Pelicans. Ultimately, the tanking season for the Jazz is dependent on the type of season Collin Sexton will have this year.
Sexton and Lauri Markkanen arrived in the big Donovan Mitchell trade. I do feel bad for Sexton because he only ended up playing 11 games last year, due to tearing his ACL early in the season. The Cavaliers ended up actually getting a lot better, and even though they did not end up making the playoffs, the future is shining bright in Cleveland. Sexton was part of those poor Cleveland teams post-LeBron and pre-Mobley. There have been multiple stories of the Cavs’ veterans getting frustrated with Sexton’s play throughout those years, including this famous clip of Kevin Love visibly frustrated at him in the middle of a game. After those early years, the season where the team shows promise, Sexton has nothing to do with the turnaround. Now he is in a situation where he would be the driving force for a team looking to be as bad as possible. The bright side for the young guard out of Alabama is that he will get everything he can eat this season in terms of volume. He also recently signed a trade friendly extension this past summer with 4 years, $70.9M. Sexton has a chance to prove that he is valuable in this league. It is going to be difficult, but unfortunately, he does not really have a choice. If Sexton is somehow really good and helps the Jazz get some wins, what will stop the team from shutting him down early in the season? Teams who are looking to lose more games are now shutting down their best players in order to be bad. And with Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson being highly regarded rookies coming into the league next year, I highly doubt that the Jazz would not try that tactic this year with Sexton.
The 8th pick from the 2018 Draft is at a crossroads in his career. If he plays like he has during those years in Cleveland, he will decrease the chances for him to be wanted by another team trying to compete, but at the same time help the Jazz achieve their goal of being the worst team in the league. It’s a predicament that no player should ever have to go through, but it’s a sad truth for NBA players.
