Dante “Wrecks ’em” Exum has been surprisingly good in his return from injury. Surprising in two ways, because he wasn’t very good before getting injured anyway, and because his type of injury usually makes players worse, not better. He’s still being eased into things, but early indications suggest that he’ll be a nice role-player next year.
“Nice role-player” isn’t what the Jazz were hoping for when they drafted him, but after all his injuries and ineffective play when not injured, anything other than “huge bust” is a win. Luckily all my old Exum vids got deleted so no one will be able to check how many times I foolishly and hastily called him the b-word.
Included in those old vids was one of Exum scoring 22, a career-high and one more than this. Tonight’s performance, however, is way more impressive; I seem to remember the other one being nothing but layups. There are some layups in this one also, but they’re cool, at least by layups standards. That steal on the inbound, while a result of blatant tanking on the part of the Grizzlies, was a savvy play.