On May 7, 2017, Royce O’Neale went scoreless in 17 minutes off the bench in a regular-season game for Gran Canaria, a club team in Spain.
A year later, on May 6 and 8 of 2018, O’Neale found himself in the starting lineup for the Utah Jazz in Games 4 and 5 of the NBA's Western Conference semifinals against the Houston Rockets and averaged 12.5 points in 32.5 minutes per game while being tasked with defending likely NBA MVP James Harden.
Those contests marked the fourth and fifth consecutive in which O’Neale was in Utah head coach Quin Snyder’s starting five.