Both having passed through the Sixers since the start of the year, Kenneth Lofton Jr and Darius Bazley continue to follow each other. Both players will sign with the Jazz assures Adrian Wojnarowski from ESPN. Utah will sign both players for three seasons, but to non-guaranteed contracts, which look more like an extended trial period than a place in the NBA. To make room for both, the team parted ways with one player: Otto Porter Jr. arrived from the Raptors during the trade deadline, and who had not reached an agreement for a buy-out.
For Lofton as for Bazley, this new opportunity punctuates a difficult year. The first was cut at the start of the season by the Grizzlies who drafted him in 2022, before bouncing back without further success as a player on a two-way contract with Philadelphia, which ended his lease on March 1. He met Darius Bazley, a promising power forward for the Thunder (13.7 points and 7.2 rebounds per game in 2020-2021) before being sent to the Suns where he had very little time. of playing time. He obtained a ten-day contract with the Sixers at the end of February, after playing ten minutes in three games without scoring a single point.
A freewheeling end to the season for Jazz
The two players especially shone individually this season in the G-League, with the Delaware Blue Coats: 26.4 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists for Lofton in 11 games; 20.2 points, 9.5 rebounds and 2.2 blocks in 26 games for Bazley.
For the Jazz, these lower-cost reinforcements reinforce a squad deprived of Lauri Markkanen and Taylor Hendricks at position 4. The Salt Lake City franchise is 5.5 wins behind the Warriors, the first provisional qualifiers for the play-in, a delay which now seems difficult to make up for. The opportunity perhaps to remember that Kenneth Lofton took advantage of a last regular season match without challenges at the end of last season to sign 42 points and 14 rebounds.
