{"id":540840,"date":"2026-03-14T23:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T23:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/540840\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T23:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T23:13:13","slug":"meet-andersson-garcia-the-utah-jazzs-new-inspirational-player-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/540840\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Andersson Garcia, the Utah Jazz’s new inspirational player \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was first published as the Jazz Insiders<\/a> newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Friday. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Andersson Garcia signed a 10-day contract with the Utah Jazz. A few hours later, he played in his first NBA game, and left the Delta Center with the game ball, despite the fact the Jazz lost to the New York Knicks.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really played hard \u2014 guards, rebounds, digs out loose balls,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. \u201cI was really proud of the way that he played. … Obviously he\u2019s been in the building the last day and a half, and I\u2019ve spent five minutes with him, probably, but the great part is, his strengths are very simple, repeatable things. I thought he played really hard tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

A scan of the box score wouldn\u2019t tell the whole story of Garcia\u2019s performance and doesn\u2019t describe the force with which he defended or the multiple times he tapped out loose balls for extra offensive possessions for the Jazz.<\/p>\n

And the box score certainly wouldn\u2019t describe the shock for Garcia when he got called up a couple of days prior while competing with the G League\u2019s Mexico City Capitanes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super grateful, but at the same time, I was really surprised,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting to be here right now … coming from the Dominican Republic, it\u2019s a small island where not a lot of basketball players can be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia went undrafted last year after playing at Texas A&M and previously at Mississippi State. He didn\u2019t have any pre-draft workouts with NBA teams before joining the G League Capitanes after getting Rookie of the Year honors in Liga Nacional de Baloncesto, the top league in the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday he didn\u2019t have a Wikipedia page dedicated to him (though he does now<\/a>), and there is no photo of Garcia on his Basketball Reference page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When he got the call that he\u2019d be joining the Jazz on a 10-day deal, he tried to call friends and family but struggled to get hold of anyone back home. Eventually, he was able to talk to them and the response was electric.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey was crying and I think they\u2019re still crying right now,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cBack home, I have a little video, a little message for the future, saying that I want to be somebody in the future, that I want to be remembered in my city and my country, and today, being able to be here, it\u2019s like a party, like a parade in my city right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 35 games with the Capitanes, Garcia averaged 10.9 points on 55.6% shooting overall to go with 9.8 rebounds. He\u2019s recorded 12 double-doubles, including two games with 20-plus rebounds, and three contests with 20 or more points. <\/p>\n

\"\"Utah Jazz forward Andersson Garcia (0) knocks the ball away from New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns (32) under the basket as Jazz and Knicks play at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, on Wednesday, March 11, 2026. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News New with the JazzFrom the archivesExtra pointsJazz two-way players combine for 38 points to help beat banged-up Warriors (Deseret News<\/a>)How the Utah Jazz are doing in the tankathon (Deseret News<\/a>)NBA\u2019s 65-game rule was a bandage for a symptom that never addressed the root issue (Deseret News<\/a>)Around the leagueUp nextMarch 13 | 8 p.m. MDT | Utah Jazz @ Portland Trail Blazers | KJZZMarch 15 | 8 p.m. MDT | Utah Jazz @ Sacramento Kings | KJZZMarch 18 | 6 p.m. MDT | Utah Jazz @ Minnesota Timberwolves| KJZZMarch 19 | 7 p.m. MDT | Utah Jazz vs. Milwaukee Bucks | KJZZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was first published as the Jazz Insiders newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,5872,19924,85],"class_list":["post-540840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-news-feed-local","tag-newsletters","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}