The Utah Jazz have lost five of their last seven games and are currently one game out of the eighth spot in the Western Conference. The Jazz had high expectations this season and at the very least were expecting to get a playoff berth. That still may happen but the Jazz have been ravaged by injuries this season and that has really hurt them. One player who hasn't been hurt is Trey Burke who has played very well off the bench this season but he wasn't always OK with the idea of coming off the bench, according to Jody Genessy of the Deseret News.
Utah was hit with the injury bug early on this season when point guard Dante Exum tore his ACL over the summer. Exum was expected to be the starting point guard for the Jazz so when he got hurt Burke was expecting to fill in for him as the starter. Instead, head coach Quin Snyder decided to go in a different direction and start rookie Raul Neto.
Neto has started 42 of Utah's 44 games so far this season while Burke has appeared in every game but hasn't started a single one, even when Neto didn't play. At first Burke was none too happy about being a bench player but now he has taken to it and is thriving.
"Just to have been starting my entire life, really you have to get used to coming off the bench, It was an adjustment for me, obviously. It was what was best for the team. Coach wanted me to be a spark coming off the bench. He wanted me to be aggressive when I got in the game, be a leader out there for that second group, some games finish out with the first group," said Burke.
Burke is one of only two players on the Jazz, along with Gordon Hayward, to have appeared in every game so far this season and he is currently having his best season. Burke's 12.4 points per game is the fourth most among bench players in the NBA and he has also been much more efficient than he was in his first two seasons as he is shooting career high percentages from the field (43 percent) and from three (35 percent).
Burke doesn't do much else besides score the ball as he isn't a good defender and he also isn't a great facilitator which is why a bench role suits him so well. Snyder has made it clear at this point that Burke will continue to come off the bench regardless of the circumstance because it suits him well but also because the rest of Utah's bench has struggled since Alec Burks went down. Burke may not be a starter for the Jazz this season but he is still one of their more important players so it's a good thing he realized that starting isn't all that important.
