Jazz can still make the playoffs without the injured Dante Exum

— -- The Utah Jazz have confirmed the diagnosis we'd been fearing since point guard Dante Exum left an exhibition game for the Australian national team with a noncontact injury to his left knee. Exum has a torn ACL, an injury that likely will end his 2015-16 season before it could even begin.

Obviously, a serious injury is a setback for Exum, who turned 20 just last month. But its impact on Utah's chances of returning to the playoffs after a three-year absence is less clear. Even without the 2014 top-five pick, the Jazz may still be able to build on the momentum they found in the second half of last season.

Projecting the 2015-16 Jazz

With a healthy Exum, Utah stood an excellent chance of cracking the top eight in the Western Conference. The Jazz went 19-10 after the All-Star break, the NBA's sixth-best record, and their point differential (plus-5.0 points per game) ranked fifth in the league.

While Utah would have been hard-pressed to maintain that 54-win pace, early 2015-16 projections still liked the Jazz's playoff chances. One based on the multiyear, predictive version of ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) projected Utah to win 47 games, the sixth-best among West teams.

Redistributing Exum's minutes to likely replacement Trey Burke and the other backup point guards ( Raul Neto and Bryce Cotton) drops the Jazz's projection to 42 wins, good for eighth in the West. Nearly all of that decline is at the defensive end of the floor. Utah allowed 6.5 fewer points per 100 possessions with Exum on the floor rather than Burke, per NBA.com/Stats.

While that's partially attributable to Exum playing more frequently with defensive anchor Rudy Gobert -- more than two-thirds of Exum's minutes came with Gobert alongside him, compared to less than half of Burke's minutes with Gobert -- RPM accounts for this and still has Exum rated as the far better defender. Burke-Gobert lineups were less effective defensively than those with Exum and Gobert.

At the same time, it's easy to overstate the difference between the Jazz's two primary point guards. Those same Burke-Gobert lineups were better offensively than Exum-Gobert pairings, and Utah was actually slightly better overall with Burke alongside Gobert rather than Exum. RPM also shows Burke as nearly average offensively, while Exum rates substantially below average.

It's remarkable how quickly Burke has been written off. He's barely two years removed from being the No. 9 pick in 2013, and he won't turn 23 until November. Given the history of point guards developing later than players at other positions, it's possible that Burke could take a big step forward this season. His closest comparison in my SCHOENE projection system is another late bloomer, Phoenix Suns point guard Brandon Knight.

Burke might benefit from being used more like Exum was during his rookie season. The Jazz put training wheels on Exum, relying on wing players Gordon Hayward, Rodney Hood and Joe Ingles to run the offense while Exum spent much of his time spotting up in the corner. Per NBA.com/Stats, Exum handled the ball during 11.8 percent of his minutes, compared to 17.6 percent for Burke. Despite his poor 3-point shooting (31.8 percent in 2014-15), Burke has been most effective in spot-up situations, according to Synergy Sports tracking, so playing him off the ball more frequently could help the Utah offense.

An intriguing, more extreme alternative would be the Jazz eschewing a point guard entirely. After all, that's effectively what Utah did with Exum on the court last season. With the return of shooting guard Alec Burks -- another player comfortable handling the ball -- from shoulder surgery, there's a bit of a minutes crunch on the wing. Burks, Hayward, Hood and Ingles combined to play 110 minutes per game last season, something that's impossible with all four of them healthy and just 96 minutes a night available at the wing spots.

Coach Quin Snyder can keep the no-point guard lineups as an option in case the 23-year-old Neto struggles to adjust to the NBA in his first season in the U.S. after playing in the Spanish ACB league the past four seasons. Based on his translated Spanish stats, the drop from Burke to Neto might be larger than the drop from Exum to Burke. Cotton also factors into the mix, and Exum's injury improves his chances of surviving the battle among four players with non-guaranteed contracts -- the others being  Jack Cooley, Chris Johnson and Elijah Millsap -- for the two open spots on the Jazz roster.

Effect on Exum

The impact of Exum's injury on Utah this coming season pales in comparison to its importance on the guard's long-term outlook as a player. Sadly, we have plenty of experience with severe injuries to members of the 2014 draft class. Exum joins No. 2 selection Jabari Parker with torn ACLs among this group. No. 3 pick Joel Embiid missed his entire rookie season with a navicular fracture in his right foot and is likely to sit out this season after the bone failed to respond to surgery. And No. 7 pick Julius Randle was sidelined the remainder of 2014-15 after suffering a fractured tibia in the season opener.

In all of these cases, save Embiid's, the physical impact of the injury is probably secondary to lost development time for players coming into the league longer on potential than polish. The timing of Exum's injury is heartbreaking because it came so soon after he gave a tantalizing glimpse of what he could become during the one game he played at the Jazz Summer League. Sadly, that game ended with a sprained ankle, and Utah played it cautiously by sitting Exum the rest of the summer, in part because he was scheduled to join his national team.

The good news is that Exum appears to have suffered a relatively clean ACL injury, without damage to any of the associated ligaments or to his knee cartilage. Beyond that, my research has shown that players who suffer ACL injuries at a young age tend to bounce back better than their older counterparts. Jamal Crawford and Iman Shumpert both suffered torn ACLs at age 21 and have experienced few long-term consequences, and while Ricky Rubio hasn't necessarily developed as hoped, an ACL injury at age 21 hasn't really sapped his athleticism.