SALT LAKE CITY -- During the first evening of the Utah Jazz Summer League, all eyes were on the point guards in the host Jazz's matchup with the Boston Celtics. The game pitted the top two point guards taken in the 2014 NBA draft, Utah's Dante Exum and Boston's Marcus Smart, offering an opportunity to assess their development a little more than 12 months later.
"Especially when you're the first two off the board, you try to go out there and play hard," Smart said of a rivalry that dates back to the FIBA U19 World Championship in 2013, when Exum played for his native Australia and Smart won gold with USA Basketball. "We're going to go out there and play hard regardless, though."
The common denominator between the development both point guards showed from uneven rookie seasons was their ability to get to the basket, and more specifically to the free throw line -- a disappointment for both players during the 2014-15 regular season.