Very few days in Utah Jazz history have made me as excited as Thursday, June 22, 2023 – the night of that years NBA draft. As a plucky 18 year old, I (unwisely) fancied myself quite the prodigy in the draft field, and 7 to 10 P.M was my time to show off my stuff. I thought Taylor Hendricks was a pretty solid selection , and didn’t feel too strongly one way or other about Keyonte George (though I would’ve preferred Brandin Podziemski).
I had set myself up for disappointment that night – there was a player that I had convinced myself beyond all doubt was the correct pick at #9, but who was so outside of the realm of possibility that this pipe dream was bringing me nothing but grief. He wasn’t picked at #9 and, even more heartbreakingly, he wasn’t picked at #16. Surely, he wasn’t going to last until the Jazz’s last pick at #28. Surely.
But someway,
somehow,
the Utah Jazz selected Brice Sensabaugh at #28. We are going to win the championship.
2023 Grant Nielson has not yet been completely validated (I hope I have not shot down 2026 Grant Nielson’s credibility in the opening 200 words). Brice has shown flashes each of his first three seasons, but he cannot yet even be labeled as categorically positive – the shooting has been less consistent than hoped, the shot selection has often been morbidly fascinating, and the defense has been unequivocally awful. His smoothness in the mid-range has not yet served as the foundation for a winning basketball player.
However, I will continue to stubbornly, almost paternalistically, stand in defense of my younger self and his contrarian draft opinions, because, in spite of it all, I still endorse pieces of my 2023 evaluation of Ohio State’s freshman bucket-getter. As Sensabaugh continues to make year-by-year improvements, I concurrently become less and less ashamed of my pre-draft championing of him. Brice was as effortless of a shot-maker as I had ever seen for a player his age, from any area on the court. He had the mass to avoid the fate of other spindly scorers in his archetype (I’m glad the Jazz didn’t take Jett Howard), and a sneaky athleticism that should do just enough to allow him to translate his game to the next level. Coming out of high school, he was marketed as more of a point forward, leading me to believe that the flashes of passing I saw at Ohio State could be harnessed and developed into something more. Then and now, Brice Sensabaugh had and has it.
A comment given by Austin Ainge, given in an interview with new Salt Lake Tribune Jazz writer Shreyas Laddha, provides me with some hope that the it that Brice has is finally becoming the it that the Utah Jazz need. When asked which players have stood out over the summer, Ainge didn’t begin by gushing over either Ace Bailey or Darryn Peterson, the two youngsters with the most pedigree and (hopefully) room for growth – instead, he said begins by saying that Brice Sensabaugh has had a “particularly good summer”. Immediately, I was struck by how odd this comment would read if Brice is not apart of the opening night rotation, which is not yet guaranteed; the Jazz are hoarding wealth when it comes to competent back-up shooting guards.
But after that initial reaction, I asked myself – “what does that even mean?” In an empty gym, Brice has always looked great. Purely from a shot-making perspective, Sensabaugh isn’t substantially worse than a lot of the 20 points per game, household name, franchise faces. Does a “particularly good summer” imply more of the same beautiful mid-range jumpers, or is Austin referring to something more?
The Utah Jazz backup shooting guard race is still decidedly up in the air, so in this article I will lay out the 3 (feasible) improvements necessary for Brice to make if he wishes to secure consistent playing time this year, and that I hope were the foundation of the Summer that Austin Ainge found so praiseworthy.
On-Ball Playmaking and Passing
Normally, when teaching a highly talented youngster how to become a winning player, it involves some degree of scaling down. No longer are you the #1 option – you have skill, and you need to learn how to translate it to the very specific role that we need you to play. Strangely enough, I feel the opposite is more applicable to Brice, and that is all entirely due to the context of the team around him, especially when he is playing with bench units. The backups brought in this Summer have clearly been chosen to shore up the team’s obvious defensive shortcomings – Jaxson Hayes, Josh Okogie, and Josh Green all have paid their bills on the defensive end, but conversely offer very little offensively. Now, I don’t think that trio will play very many minutes all together, but I do anticipate minutes with two of the three on the court; those minutes will live and die by the hand of the offensive conductor that accompanies them. Hayes, Okogie, Green, and even slightly more well-rounded bench pieces like Svi and (likely) Ace – none are players that, at this point, are consistently creating offense for themselves or their teammates. They can be positive, but they, for the most part, prefer to receive than to give.
Brice Sensabaugh, being one of the few competent ball-handlers on the roster, has the capacity to be a huge boon to the second unit when placed next to more defensively oriented players. While my 2023 dreams of a point forward Sensabaugh are dead and buried, I have consistently been impressed with the accuracy and decision making Brice showcases when he does decide to function as a playmaker. I’ve been especially impressed with his passes on the move – his ability to situate himself, pick up the ball from the dribble, and deliver accurate passes are three small skills, but still quite valuable ones. This pass below was probably the Utah Jazz assist of the season, and exemplifies what I hope Brice has been focusing on this Summer.
So, while I don’t want too many sets to be initiated by Brice dribbling the ball up the court as a traditional point guard, I think there are other ways for his passing to open up the offense. I picture him in the corner to start a play, running off of a Filipowski pin-down, catching the pass from Collier on the wing and then, with the pressure of his shooting shifting the defense, taking two or three dribbles into the middle of the court and making an accurate, quick decision. His shooting is the one skill that we can unequivocally count on heading into this next season, and it has the potential to unlock so much of his game. The play outlined above only works because of the gravity Sensabaugh will have as a shooter running off that screen – defenders who have read the scouting report know that Brice is a contender for the best off-the-catch shooter on the team, and will be strained in their attempt to stay on their man and make Brice’s shots more challenging. I don’t mean to sound blasphemous to Jazz fans, but I would love to see Brice play a role similar to a modern-day Jeff Hornacek (this is only a comparison of role, not skill) – a player made so dynamic by their unique combination of shooting and playmaking. We’ve seen the signs from Brice in this regard, and this development (both in Brice’s skill and Hardy’s gameplan) looks to be some tantalizing low-hanging fruit.
Rim Pressure and Shot Selection
This change requires both a shift in attitude and physicality. Even back to his collegiate days, Brice has always been a bit too comfortable in settling. Sure, he’s never possessed overwhelming quickness or burst, but he has always had the physical size necessary to impose his will on smaller players. To this point in his career, Brice has simply not gotten to the rim enough. He shot 11% of his total attempts at the basket this past season – a career high – but, for reference, that would be the 3rd lowest mark of Svi Mykhailiuk’s entire career. Instead, when he begins to face resistance on the path to the rim, he too often falls back on his floater or a short, fall-away midrange – he has a comparative advantage over much of the league with these shots, but even he doesn’t shoot them efficiently enough for them to act as a substitute to a rim attempt. Additionally, with every subpar floater or midrange, two naturally contact-averse shot attempts, Sensabaugh lets the referees off the hook. Even if he misses a contested layup or two due to his limited verticality, his frame could be ideal for physicality and, in turn, foul drawing. Free throws are the most efficient shot in basketball, especially for a player like Brice (85% at the line over his career thus far), and he is leaving those points at the table with his inefficient shot selection and avoidance of contact near the basket.
I believe rim attempts will become more plentiful as Brice plays for a team with the goal of winning. Offense is not a 1v1 game – Sensabaugh is not the only player who has an impact on his individual shots at the basket. As the team improves, both in mindset and performance, our offense will be better. As our offense improves, more strain is put on the opposing defense. As strain on the defense increases, it becomes easier and easier for a player to get to his spots. No longer are we incentivized to give substantial minutes to Bez Mbeng and Kyle Anderson – instead, Will Hardy will use his best players and his best schemes to produce the best offense. I see a world where, with only marginal improvements to Brice’s talent as a player, he jumps to a 20% rim frequency this next season, driven by his inclusion in an offense with a newfound desire for competence. He certainly has to want to get to the rim, but infrastructure may be the independent variable most causally linked with Brice’s shot selection.
The midrange shots sure are pretty, though.
Defense, Defense, Defense
At the end of the day, this is the improvement. It’d be great if Brice showcased his passing, and I’d love if he got to the rim more frequently, but they are almost inconsequential in comparison to defense, defense, defense. In each of his three seasons, Brice has populated the very bottom of the barrel in every advanced defensive stat you can find. Unfortunately, these one-number metrics are substantiated by a putrid eye-test. He’s too slow to guard guards, too contact-averse to guard bigger on-ball wings, too large to chase off-ball wings off of screens, too short to guard forwards and bigs. He doesn’t steal and he doesn’t block and he doesn’t rebound. Even more fatally, it is painfully obvious that defense has not been Brice’s priority. He was recruited to Ohio State as a scorer, he was drafted as a scorer, so, seemingly, he still considers himself as only a scorer. I don’t enjoy participating in armchair psychology, but the chasmic difference in effort level between his mid-range isos and off-ball defense makes some theorizing inevitable. In an era where coaches are more persistently and meticulously attacking mismatches than ever before, If Brice does not improve on defense, he cannot play basketball in the playoffs.
Thankfully, he seems to know this just as much as we do. When asked about his work over the offseason, Brice responded with defense as an emphasis:
Brice does not need to become a lockdown. He doesn’t need to become a steal+block machine or start pulling down 10 rebounds a night. He just needs to be fine. His offense gives him his NBA-level skill, and all he needs to do now is make sure that the rest of his game isn’t nullifying it. Currently, if Brice is having a bad shooting game, he is providing some of the harshest negative impact in the league – the defense is damaging enough that he cannot afford the low shooting percentage games that will naturally, inevitably come to every player. However, if it is true that defense has been one of the two primary focuses of Brice’s summer, his value could legitimately skyrocket. Even a marginal improvement defensively could exponentially increase the value of Sensabaugh on the basketball court – a worst-in-the-league level defender is so much more detrimental than a simply bad defender, and a coach can much easier utilize a bad defender’s offense than a worst-in-the-league level defender. Maybe it requires losing weight and maybe it’s just a mindset shift, but either way – Brice Sensabaugh can guarantee himself 20 minutes per game and a decade in the league if defense changes from an intermission to a priority.
I’m rooting for Brice Sensabaugh. I’ve been rooting for Brice Sensabaugh for over 3 years. I hope that he is the backup shooting guard selection because I believe that, of the available options, he clearly has the highest ceiling. However, from my over 3 years of fandom, I have become just as well acquainted with what Brice is bad at as what he is good at. So, while it’s good that I wasn’t in the Jazz brass championing Brice as a potential #9 overall selection in the 2023 NBA draft, with a few well-directed tweaks over this particularly impressive summer, Sensabaugh can still be a home-run #28 draft pick.
What are you hoping to see from Brice this year? Let me know below!
