Keyonte George has slowly been making his case as one of the NBA\u2019s most improved players during the 2025-26 season, and on Friday night in Memphis he put on a pretty convincing performance in the Utah Jazz\u2019s 130-126 win over the Grizzlies.<\/p>\n
With a career-high 39 points, George led the Jazz, but the points came in rhythm and almost quietly. It\u2019s how he is scoring and all of the other things he\u2019s doing on the court that have made this season so different when compared to his previous two years in the league.<\/p>\n
In shooting 12 of 20 overall Friday, George hit 5-of-9 from 3-point range and went 10 of 10 from the free throw line. His shots this season have overwhelmingly been either 3-pointers or shots at the rim, with the majority of the inefficient mid-range shots being cut out of his shot profile. Even more importantly, he\u2019s not forcing up shots.<\/p>\n
Additionally, through the first 24 games of this season, George has proven to be patient and regularly passes up his own good looks for a shot that is even better for a teammate, with proof of that being in his eight assists in the win over Memphis and continuing to make decisions to feed the hot hand.<\/p>\n
While George had 39, Lauri Markkanen had 26 points and Kevin Love scored 13 of his 20 points in the third quarter alone, so it was a night of unselfishness that led to George\u2019s outing.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeyonte played a terrific game start to finish,\u201d Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. \u201cObviously the foul trouble put him in a few tough spots there late in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right. In addition to scoring a career-best 27 first-half points en route to an overall career high, George was also strapped with a high foul count and played the final 7:10 of the game with five.<\/p>\n
The Jazz tried to take him away from plays defensively despite the fact that the Grizzlies were hunting him in an attempt take him out of the game via a sixth foul, but that didn\u2019t stop George from making smart decisions, especially on the offensive end, where the foul risk was still ever present.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did a good job of picking his spots and playing with good patience, because when you have five, people who are going to step in and try to take charges, they\u2019re going to try to bait you \u2014 hooking and grabbing,\u201d Hardy said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think he showed a lot of maturity in terms of keeping himself out of some tough spots where the whistle can go against you…Keyonte has grown so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
With just under a third of the season in the books, George will have plenty of time to continue making his case as one of the league\u2019s most improved players and showing his teammates and the Jazz coaching staff that his growth can be trusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe keeps getting better and better every game that we play,\u201d Markkanen said. \u201cIt was just a matter of time for this to happen and it\u2019s just the beginning for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keyonte George has slowly been making his case as one of the NBA\u2019s most improved players during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82,15717],"class_list":{"0":"post-341968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-utah-jazz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}