{"id":125219,"date":"2025-02-23T11:25:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T16:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=125219"},"modified":"2025-02-23T11:25:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T16:25:26","slug":"keyonte-george-historic-outing-off-bench","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/23\/keyonte-george-historic-outing-off-bench\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyonte George Has Historic Outing Off Bench Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For some NBA players, being benched can be demoralizing and hurt their confidence. Others use it as motivation to prove to their coach that it should be just a temporary move. It seems to be the latter for Utah Jazz guard <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/g\/georgke01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Keyonte George<\/a>. The second-year player had an historic evening for the Jazz on Saturday while coming off the bench.<\/p>\n<h2>Keyonte George Has Historic Outing Off Bench Saturday<\/h2>\n<h3>Keyonte George\u2019s Wonderful Performance Off Bench Against Rockets<\/h3>\n<p>The Jazz entered Saturday\u2019s contest 21.5 games behind their opponent, the Houston Rockets, in the standings. Outscoring Houston by 12 in the final stanza, Utah came out on top by the score of 124-115, The win improved their record to a still-lowly 14-42, second-worst in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n<p>It was an outstanding performance by the 21-year-old George in the victory. Playing 29 minutes on Saturday, the 6-foot-4 point guard finished the outing with 30 points, eight rebounds, and six assists. He shot an impressive 10-17 from the field and 5-8 from beyond the arc. George scored eight points and dished out three assists in the decisive fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Per StatMamba, George became the youngest player in NBA history to have a game of at least 30 points, five assists, and five three-pointers made while coming off the bench. He won\u2019t turn 22 years old until November 8.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Keyonte George becomes the youngest player in NBA history to come off bench &amp; record:<\/p>\n<p>30+ PTS<br \/>5+ AST<br \/>5+ 3PM <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/oRxs2BdeYB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/oRxs2BdeYB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Polymarket Hoops (@StatMamba) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StatMamba\/status\/1893528079215038810?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 23, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>While this was George\u2019s best performance since being benched, he\u2019s had other solid games as well as a reserve.<\/p>\n<h3>Has Improved His Play As A Reserve<\/h3>\n<p>Selected by Utah with the 16th overall pick in the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/26\/surprises-this-year-from-2023-nba-draft\/\" target=\"_self\">2023 NBA Draft<\/a>, George was a starter for each of his first 32 appearances. That changed on January 25 when he came off the bench for the first time, and he has now done so in 14 straight games.<\/p>\n<p>When in the starting lineup, George has played an average of 31.5 minutes per contest. He has posted averages of 16.5 points, 3.4 rebounds, 5.6 assists, and 3.0 turnovers. While somewhat productive, there were times George was a turnstile at the defensive end, and he often scored inefficiently. While a starter, he shot just 39.4% from the field and 34.8% from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n<p>Again, George has now been used in a reserve role for 14 games. The 29th pick in the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/08\/01\/nba-execs-say-this-pick-was-the-biggest-reach-in-2024-nba-draft\/\" target=\"_self\">2024 NBA Draft<\/a>, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/c\/colliis01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Isaiah Collier,<\/a> has taken George\u2019s spot with the starters. George\u2019s playing time has essentially been the same, as he has averaging just 0.1 less minutes than he did as a starter (31.4). His averages off the bench include 17.5 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 6.4 assists. The turnovers have gone down to 2.4 per contest. While his three-point shooting is slightly done (33.4%), he has shot a much more respectable 43.7% from the field.<\/p>\n<p>So that is a 4.3% increase in field goal shooting since George has gone to the bench. \u00a0A 1.93 assist-to-turnover ratio as a starter has improved greatly to 2.62 as a reserve. His offensive rating is at 119 off the bench compared to just 106 when playing as a starter.<\/p>\n<p>Will George continue his improved play as a reserve? His next chance to comes on Monday when the Jazz go on the road to take on the Portland Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: \u00a9 Rob Gray-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some NBA players, being benched can be demoralizing and hurt their confidence. Others use it as motivation to prove to their coach that it should be just a temporary move. It seems to be the latter for Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George. The second-year player had an historic evening for the Jazz on Saturday [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":125234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,3,24],"tags":[4930,4665],"class_list":["post-125219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-news","category-jazz","tag-isaiah-collier","tag-keyonte-george"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125219"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125238,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125219\/revisions\/125238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}