Keyonte George’s turnover numbers have increased in March. Is this cause for concern?
From the beginning of the 2023-24 NBA season through the end of February, Utah Jazz rookie Keyonte George had just five games in which he committed four or more turnovers — that’s just five high-turnover games in more than four months. In the month of March, he’s had six such games, including two six-turnover performances.
This season, the Jazz have committed more turnovers than any other team, but even as they have seemingly turned a corner — committing fewer turnovers in March than any other month of the season — George’s turnover numbers have gone up.
One month of data is not something that necessarily will define a player. Players will go through shooting slumps that last a month and it doesn’t mean that we believe they’ve lost the ability to shoot effectively or efficiently. So I’m not saying that George has lost his ability to efficiently handle the ball
But, as with shooters, it’s worth examining what’s happening during the slump and taking a deeper look. It’s especially important in this case because one of the things that was widely talked about when George was coming into the draft was his negative assist-to-turnover ratio at Baylor.
In Jazz coach Will Hardy’s opinion, there’s a mix of stuff going on. George has been dealing with a different type of workload from one night to the next. One day Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson are playing alongside George, so he’s obviously in more of a facilitator role, then he might go a handful of games flanked by rookies and two-way players, where George is the primary scorer. That makes the reads wildly different from one game to the next.
Then, there’s the increased minutes George has been playing. After averaging 25.4 minutes per game through February, George is now playing 32 minutes per game
