Exum and Ingles eye NBA playoffs

The Utah Jazz are on a six-game winning streak and Australian duo Joe Ingles and Dante Exum are major reasons for the red hot form.

They are Australian basketball's odd couple, best mates and Utah Jazz comrades who gel on the NBA court but are ruthless to each other off it.

There's Joe Ingles, the scruffy 27-year-old globetrotter and Dante Exum the clean cut, fresh, 19-year-old phenom who has ditched his former uniform of tracksuits and sneakers for skinny jeans and suave jackets.

Ask Ingles and Exum who would win a one-on-one game of basketball bedlam erupts.

"I'll stand under the basket and let him shoot threes," Ingles, poking fun at Exum's accuracy from long range, laughed during a conference call with Australian reporters on Tuesday.

"Once Joe corrects his slingshot of a shot, maybe we can talk," Exum fires back.

"I'm too quick for Joe, he's not strong, he can't even post me up."

It's all good-natured and the friendship extends back to when a 15-year-old Exum first joined the Australian team and Ingles took him under his wing.

It's this mateship that has helped transform the once maligned Jazz to a six-game winning streak and an outside chance of making the playoffs.

The Jazz are in the 11th spot in the Western Conference and seven wins behind injury-prone new Orleans Pelicans, who currently sit in the eighth and final playoff spot, tied on win and loss with the equally injury-prone Oklahoma City Thunder.

Thunder forward Serge Ibaka may be out for six weeks after knee surgery and the team's star Kevin Durant remains sidelined, giving the storming Jazz a potential opening with 16 games left in the regular season.

"Anything can happen in the NBA," Exum, not ruling out a playoff birth, said.

As for Exum's fashion sense, Ingles predictably had plenty to say.

Particularly about the teenager's recent Twitter posts for fashion magazine GQ's Style Wars.

"Joe, be nice," Exum warned Ingles.

"This is going to be published."

Ingles said he approved of Exum's first three Twitter postings, but took issue with Monday's photo where the teen wore a white shirt and had "his Xbox turned on in the background and a whole mess of stuff".

"I remember when he first came to the Boomers all he used to wear was Nike and adidas gear and now he comes to games in his suave little jackets and skinny jeans, so he has definitely picked up his style a bit," Ingles said.


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Source: AAP


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