{"id":186665,"date":"2025-09-28T02:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T02:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/186665\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T02:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T02:43:07","slug":"georges-niang-injury-gives-jazzman-the-perfect-training-camp-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/186665\/","title":{"rendered":"Georges Niang injury gives Jazzman the perfect training camp opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was reported by the Utah Jazz earlier today that Georges Niang will miss some time from a metatarsal injury<\/a>, though it doesn’t sound serious. It does, however, sound like Niang will miss some training camp because of it. He’ll probably be back before the regular season starts, but his absence gives Kevin Love the opportunity to show out during training camp.<\/p>\n

After it was confirmed that the Jazz would keep Love<\/a> for training camp, one would be skeptical as to whether the team actually plans to keep him for opening night. Releasing Love wouldn’t make for too bad a cap hit (even if he doesn’t give any money back). Waiving him while paying the last year of his contract in full would be $4.15 million in dead money.<\/p>\n

Sure, dead money is dead money, but it wouldn’t be that bad for the Jazz if they gave him the Jordan Clarkson treatment. That could be the outcome, but Niang’s injury gives Love the opportunity to show Utah what he still has in the tank.<\/p>\n

It may not be much, but, on paper, Love is a body who can hit threes. At this stage of his career, he’s not the player Niang is, which says a lot about his decline, but he can fill in for what Utah wants Niang to do when he’s in the rotation.<\/p>\n

Love is worse defensively than Niang is, but his spacing and his passing abilities are still there, even if he won’t be featured as much as he was during his prime in Minnesota and Cleveland. He may not play at the level Niang can, but he can be good enough as a placeholder until the Jazzman comes back. There would be mention of his rebounding, but Utah likely has no use for that from him.<\/p>\n

If Love proves himself to be dependable as Niang’s temporary replacement, that may be enough for him to make the opening night roster. The bar set for him would be “break glass in case of emergency” but it keeps him in the NBA. <\/p>\n

The irony is that the two of them are around the same height, but Love has always been considered more of a big while Niang has always been considered more of a wing.<\/p>\n

This may be Love’s very last chance<\/p>\n

Before it was confirmed that Utah was keeping Love, it was reported that he had no interest<\/a> from the open market, hence why he will come into training camp a Jazzman. Like any NBA star that came before him, Love’s prime is gone, so at this stage of his career, his best bet is taking whatever he can get. The Jazz can’t give him all that much, but they can give him something.<\/p>\n

Proving to be Niang’s replacement until his return is not much, but it could count for something should Love do just enough to convince a team to take a flyer on him either before the season starts or during buyout season, even if he won’t change their fortunes much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was reported by the Utah Jazz earlier today that Georges Niang will miss some time from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-186665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}