Former KU center Udoka Azubuike remains in Utah Jazz plans for 2022-23 NBA season
.JPG "Miami Heat center Omer Yurtseven is defended by Utah Jazz center Udoka Azubuike during the first half of an NBA summer league basketball game Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, in Las Vegas.")
The NBA’s Utah Jazz have decided to exercise their third-year team option on the contract of former Kansas center Udoka Azubuike, Jazz general manager Justin Zanik has announced.
The Jazz, who had until Monday to decide whether to commit a third year to the 6-foot-10, 280-pound, 22-year-old Azubuike, on Friday revealed the Nigeria native remained in the team’s plans for 2022-23.
As a second-year former first-round NBA Draft pick, Azubuike is guaranteed to be paid $2,075,880 this season. Exercising the team option means he’s guaranteed to be paid $2,174,880 in 2022-23. He earned $1,977,000 as a rookie last season after being selected No. 27 overall in the 2020 NBA Draft. He also has a team option for the 2023-24 campaign ($3,923,483).
“Last year, we drafted him and four days later, he shows up to camp, and we’re telling him, ‘You’re not going to get any reps in the regular season No. 1, because of the goals that we have as a veteran team, and No. 2, nobody in college plays like us,’” Jazz general manager Zanik told the Salt Lake Tribune on Friday.
Azubuike suffered a severe high ankle sprain playing in a game for the Jazz’s G League team — the Salt Lake City Stars — early in his rookie campaign. He returned to the court several months after incurring the injury and wound up playing in 15 games with the Jazz in 2020-21. He averaged 1.1 points, 0.9 rebounds and 0.3 blocks while logging four minutes a game in those 15 contests.
Azubuike averaged 13.8 points, 8.8 rebounds and 2.5 blocks a game this past summer for the Jazz in the Las Vegas Summer League.
“I was very happy with him in the summer and the work that he’s done,” Zanik said. “It’s just really hard to be in game-type shape when you’re not playing games. I mean, we’d replicate that toward the end of the (2020-21) regular season when he got healthy — we’d play a lot of 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 with the younger guys or the guys that weren’t playing much last season, but that’s completely different,” Zanik added.
Azubuike has not entered an NBA game for the Jazz yet this season. Currently, All-Star Rudy Gobert, the team’s starting center, is backed by Hassan Whiteside. Azubuike currently is practicing with the G League’s Stars at G League preseason camp.
Zanik told the Salt Lake Tribune that Azubuike will “get plenty of specialized attention” with the Stars the first two months of the season. He should “have the opportunity to be a focal part of the Stars’ schemes which should hasten his development,” wrote Eric Walden of the Salt Lake Tribune.
Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote of Azubuike: “He is a record-setter: he set the all-time NCAA field-goal percentage record by shooting 74% over the course of his career (at Kansas). How? Well, by standing 7-feet tall, having a 7-7 wingspan, and having an NBA Combine record for a center 37-inch vertical leap. He is a superlative dunker, one of the best we’ve ever seen, and his screen-and-roll threat is profound.”
Larsen added: “The problem lies in his quickness of movement. In order to jump, he has to load up — giving defenders plenty of time to collapse on him. Dunks are ‘Dok’s’ specialty (one teammate was heard yelling ‘DOK SMASH’ after a preseason conversion), but he’s not always able to go through multiple bodies to do so. If opponents foul him, Azubuike is a sketchy free-throw shooter. After shooting only 41% from the charity stripe in college, he’s shot 48% in professional play so far.
“The Jazz have to decide whether they want to gamble on Azubuike’s upside. If they feel he can get in shape and improve his movement, free-throw shooting, and rebounding, he has a real possibility of being a plus NBA center,” Larsen wrote.
According to the Deseret News’ Ryan McDonald, “In essence, exercising Azubuike’s option guarantees the Jazz more time at a low price to try to help develop him as a player to see if he can realize the potential his big frame could have before Utah gives up on the investment it made in him as a first-round draft pick.”
This story was originally published November 1, 2021 at 10:25 AM with the headline "Former KU center Udoka Azubuike remains in Utah Jazz plans for 2022-23 NBA season."
