Cody Williams showing signs of life comes at a significant cost to the Jazz

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got our eye on Cody Williams! Until recently, the former Utah Jazz lottery pick showed little progress after an extremely disappointing rookie season. Well, over the past week, Williams has shown improvement, albeit in small increments. While it’s great to see Williams take a step forward, his encouraging play has come at the Jazz’s expense as they have played worse.

Look no further than their pretty embarrassing blowout at the hands of Golden State. Williams’ stats are quite encouraging for someone who literally had nowhere to go but up this season: 15 points on five-of-nine shooting in 32 minutes, but also posting a minus-60 on the night.

Note: The Jazz lost by 55, which means Williams somehow made them worse in every minute he played, and then some.

On the surface it’s great to see Williams showing something, and he’s been doing that more and more lately, but knowing he’s making it worse when he’s on the ground ruins any excitement about what he might do. Plus/minus is a measly stat, but it seems telling that the next lowest plus/minus from that game belonged to Keyonte George at minus-38.

According to NBA.comthe Jazz are at minus-5.7 when Williams is on the floor this season. Since they started playing him consistently on December 20, that has dropped even further to minus-18.4. To be fair, with the exception of last night, he was a minus-4.7 in that part of the game.

So yes, it only takes one game to make a player look bad, but even without last night, the Jazz don’t play better when he’s on the floor. They don’t have to worry about this now, but this is concerning.

In a way, it’s working for the Jazz (for now)

So let’s be honest. It’s not like the Jazz play worse when Williams is on the floor, which doesn’t go against their intentions. They want a high lottery pick and don’t want it to go to Oklahoma City. So this revealing statistic more or less does what Utah wants. It’s better that Cody gets another lottery pick for a teammate than his brother Jalen.

More importantly, at least he’s showing something when he’s on the ground. Williams hasn’t set the world on fire, but at least he’s now aware that he can use his long frame to help with the cutting. It was made for some electric plays.

And well, playing okay while making your team worse is a step up from playing terribly while making your team worse. Especially if it doesn’t really get in the way of their immediate plans.