Joe Ingles transition from the final guy cut from the LA Clippers roster in 2014 to one of the league’s deadliest perimeter scorers in 2017-18 has been nothing short of extraordinary.
When Utah lost it’s franchise player Gordon Hayward last season, many pencilled in a rebuilding phase for the Jazz. The emergence of “Jingling” Joe in his absence however has caused the Jazz to pivot with the belief that they have a roster capable of reaching the NBA Finals now.
This upcoming season, the consistency that Joe provides on defence, ball movement and perimeter scoring will be a big part of determining how close the Jazz come to reaching that goal.
Adelaide born Ingles’ started in all bar one of the team’s 93 regular season and playoff games last season. In Hayward’s absence his production reached career highs in almost every statistical category including minutes, field goal and free throw percentage, blocks, rebounds, assists and points per game.
Whilst his increased production was obvious to the Utah fanbase, the entire league also started to notice Joe after he almost doubled his three-point attempts from 2016-17 to 2017-18 while maintaining a 44% three-point percentage.
Ingles finished among the top ten in three-point shots made and his 44% from downtown was the highest among the league’s volume shooters. NBA All-Stars like James Harden, Stephen Curry, Paul George and Damian Lillard, while making more than 200 three pointers last season shot between 36%-42%, all less effective than Ingles.
The 31 year old’s 204 made three pointers were not just incredibly efficent, they were record breaking. Ingles smashed the record for most three point makes made by a Jazz player in one season in 2017-18 and is now ranked 14th in all-time NBA three-point percentage and on track to finish his career as one of the greatest shooters of NBA history.
Many view Ingles as simply an efficient “Three and D” guy but he’s more than that, racking up multiple games with 10+ assists last season proving his play-making abilities also far outshine most players in the league. Perhaps the biggest compliment to Joe’s game is the fact his play was so effective for Utah, the Dallas Mavericks felt they needed to find their own “Joe Ingles” and scoured the Euroleague to find fellow Aussie Ryan Broekhoff to improve their NBA roster.
With Jazz’s late season run in 2018 the team has decided to make very few roster changes, opting instead to develop their existing roster, one which reached the second round of the playoffs despite the numerous obstacles.
Over the past four seasons Ingles’ has transitioned from free-agent nobody to the team’s key veteran presence. Joe is over three years older than any other member of Utah’s starting five, something which will be integral to keeping a relatively young Jazz line-up focused during the final stages of the regular season.
The NBA runs in cycles and although the Golden State Warriors may win their fourth title in five years due to having four of the leagues best twenty players on their roster, it will inevitability return to a league where well coached, defensive focused, fundamental basketball team’s return to the elite and the Utah Jazz are building something it thinks will reap the rewards of that in the future.
It’s unclear whether the team’s success last season was a fluke, or the Jazz, with no definitive all-star are about to take another step closer to reaching the NBA Finals. This season will determine if they are destined to be “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” behind super teams Golden State and Houston or will their style of play shift the needle away from NBA superteams.
Ingles importance to the Australian Boomers for the past decade is matched by few others and the fact Joe is currently playing at a career best and at a level that NBA teams are noticing and thinking “I need a guy like that on my team”. This shows us that Australia’s roster for the approaching FIBA World Cup and Olympics includes a lot of the necessary parts to be successful and there is no doubt the Boomers can secure their first medal for Australian men’s basketball.
Dan Boyce is a die-hard Sydney Kings fan who grew up in Melbourne during the roaring 90's of Australian Basketball and spent far too much time collecting Futera NBL Basketball cards.
