In the midst of perhaps the worst season of his NBA career, Mike Conley thinks that things are finally starting to look up.
After dropping a near-season-high 25 points in a win over the Boston Celtics on Friday, the Utah Jazz guard sounded especially encouraged.
“I’m in a great place, my teammates have been behind me this whole time,” said Conley, per Eric Walden of The Salt Lake Tribune. “It’s been a frustrating road for all of us, because they know how good I am, and I know how good I am. … Finally, things are starting to turn the corner.”
The 32-year-old Conley had been averaging a very bland 13.6 points and 4.3 assists per game on 40.4 percent shooting in his first season with the Jazz. He has also been in and out of the starting five for them.
Conley has proven to be a upper-tier two-way point guard at his best, but he had yet to really showcase that for the Jazz this season, resulting in them having to experiment with various lineup combinations. If he can merely supplement the scoring of Donovan Mitchell and Bojan Bogdanovic, the playmaking of Joe Ingles, and the defense of Rudy Gobert, Utah could be a nightmare matchup in the early rounds of the Western Conference playoffs.
