Jazz add Patty Mills after standout Olympics

Patty Mills may be done playing for Australia in international competition, but that doesn’t mean that his NBA career is also done and dusted. On Wednesday morning, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that Mills has signed with the Utah Jazz on a one-year, $3.3 million deal.

Mills will be reuniting with Jazz head coach Will Hardy, whom he spent six seasons with back when Hardy was still an assistant coach under Gregg Popovich for the San Antonio Spurs. While Mills is expected to provide some veteran leadership and stability for a young Jazz team at 36 years of age, he showed during the 2024 Paris Olympics that he still has some gas left in the tank.

The veteran guard averaged 16.5 points per game across four games on 41/42/100 shooting splits, and he saved his best for last in a spirited effort against Serbia in the quarterfinals of the competition. Patty Mills scored 26 points on 11-20 shooting from the field in a heartbreaking 95-90 overtime loss for Australia, with the 36-year-old being responsible for sending the game to an extra period after nailing a difficult shot over Nikola Jokic in the dying seconds of regulation.

Mills is coming off the worst season of his NBA career since his sophomore year. He only played in 32 games last season, splitting time between the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat, and he averaged just 5.8 points on a career-worst 35.1 percent shooting from the field and 27.6 percent from beyond the arc.