The Core

[troy]

A lot of posters seems to think that we can win a championship with our current core.
And by core i mean : Deron - Boozer - Okur and the young players (Brewer, Millsap) .

In my opinion this group can't win the championship.
Sure , Deron is a monster, i've got no problem with him , in my opinion he is the best point guard in the league , a two way player that can dominate his position offensively or defensively (as soon as we give some decent help defender) .
Deron is great , but the duo inside won't cut it.

1/ Defense
As good as they are offensively , Okur and Boozer's defense is not good enough.
Right now they are subpar , even if they improve a little bit and at least become average defenders it won't be enough.
We can't afford to be just a quite good defensive team.
The teams that win championships are ELITE defensive teams.
Don't believe me ? The four teams remaining right now are all top 5 in defense this year !!
Boston (1st)
Spurs (3rd)
Detroit (4th)
Lakers (5th)

the second best defense of the regular season was Houston. But when you see that all there offense is Tracy Mcgrady (one of the biggest chokers of all time) you understand why they didn't go far in the playoffs.

Only 4 champions in the past 15 years weren't a top 5 defense of the regular season.
06 Miami , 01 Lakers , 02 Lakers , 95 Rockets
All these teams though were very good defensive teams , certainly top 5 when they tried in the playoffs , except Miami.
The two lakers teams just coasted through the regular season. The Houston one had a horrible regular season but was great in the playoffs. And in 2006 you could argue that the officials gave the Heat the title.

All in all this shows that generally , to win an NBA title , YOU MUST HAVE A TOP 5 DEFENSE .

Utah will never become a top 5 defense with Okur AND Boozer inside.

Now somebody will tell me that despite their defensive woes , the Jazz went to the WCF last year and this year took two games from the possible champion Lakers.
Well i've gotta something to say about that too.

2/ This team accomplishment so far

First of all that WCF last year is overrated. We all know we weren't a deserving Western Conference finalist last year.
No way were we a top 2 team in the West last year.
The Spurs and Mavericks were better than us. So were the Suns at the time even though some of you might think that because of a couple win in the regular season against them last year we would have won a seven game playoff series .
Utah wasn't as good as those three teams and there was a world of difference actually. We all admit it , we were just lucky that the Warriors took out the Mavs.
As a result the WCF last year was one of the most lopsided Conference finals in a long time.
We were behind by 15-20 points AT THE HALF in every game in San Antonio , it was ridiculous. We were blown out BADLY three times , it's not even like the Spurs doubted once in the whole series.

In comparison , the Hornets this year took the Spurs to a game 7 . Just saying.

Then this year , we beat the Rockets , who like last year are in no way a championship contender.
In the second round we lost to the Lakers in 6 games. While some may think we weren't far from the WCF again i think the Lakers were clearly superior to us. Everybody was saying that we blew a huge opportunity in the 5th game even though WE DIDN'T EVEN LEAD ONCE in this game.
It's not like we had blown a 20 points lead like the Spurs yesterday or Phoenix in the first round.
A huge opportunity for the Jazz was tying the game 2-3 minutes before the end. That , again , is ridiculous.

At no moment we had the control of the series.
Some of you will say that if we had the home court advantage we may have won the series even though we lost the elimination game on our own floor.
The Jazz problem is not that they can't get a good seed during the regular season , it's the inability to win on the road and how do you explain that ? To win on the road , you need a defense ,something Utah doesn't lack.

3/ The core youth

Now i'm sure some of you will say : yes but we're still a young team . This team still has to grow as a group and will become a better defensive ball club. Boozer and Okur may still improve their defensive skills too. etc ...

First of all , Boozer and Okur are sixth year veterans. You don't improve your defense significantly after your sixth year in the league.
The fact that they have played that many years in the league also goes against the idea that we're so young and our chance of progress is (one of) the biggest in the league.
Sure our backourt is very young , but this frontcourt is pretty experimented. It's not because Boozer and Okur (almost) discovered the playoffs two years ago that they are still prospects.
Boozer and Okur are very very close to being finished products , and that is a scary thought when you see their defense.

Furthermore there is a lot of other teams in the league now that look as , or more promising than the Jazz.
Deron is right when you say that you can't wait , you have to play every season like it's your last chance at a title because you never know what will happen .
Utah was probably the more promising team at the beginning of the year , but since the progress of a couple of teams has contradict that.
- The Lakers : Bynum has made a lot of progress , and then there is Gasol .Kobe is 30 but this team still has at least 5 years of very very high level of play. No way our bigs stop a Gasol-Bynum duo. You can forget about it.
- The Hornets : took the Spurs to a game 7 in their first playoffs appearance. Deron's nemesis has the upper hand in terms of supporting cast now. The bigs behind him actually defends.

Then you may add also the Portland Trailblazers , who looked like a playoff team in january and will get back one of the best prospects in the past 5 years , greg oden.
Oden , Aldrige , Roy and Nate Mcmillan coaching. This team will make some noise.


When i see that i think : This team can't just wait and hope that there core will just make some huge improvements. In terms of potential Okur and Boozer are done. Kirilenko too probably.
Brewer has a lot of potential but a shooting guard can dominate a game defensively , and that's what we need right now.
Deron can become a 40pts per game scorer , it still wouldn't solve our defensive problems .
We NEED to make a big move our at least find a prospect that will replace Okur or Boozer mid term wise.
This team right now is going nowhere because there is no way it becomes a top 5 defense.

i'd like your opinion on this subject , am i just the most pessimistic Jazz fan or is there some truth here ?

[carrottop12]

Have you been working on this since last night?

But yes you are right, Boozer and Okur together more likely won't ever win the Jazz a ring.

[Lava Rock Kid]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Jazz were the youngest team by average age in the Playoffs.

When was the last time a young team really did anything.

WHile boozer and Okur may not become much better defensively, through sheer repitition they will get better all around.

This team needs time, not changes.

Remember when we would sweep the very young Lakers. The fans wanted to rebuild. All they needed was time.

The only thing I worry about is money. The day will come when hard choices have to be made, like brewers, millsap, and derons money. Who of the okur, boozer, ak gets a pay raise. We all know someof the players will leave because of the cap. We will lose in talent level. But we gain in expierence.

This team was not far off. Some of our competition is getting really old. Our day is comming.

Unless of course Stern has his say so.

[hoops4life]

I read the first 5 lines or so and stopped. I am sure you make some good valid points and I am also sure that you have to crazy points as well.

didn't you already have this argument in another thread?

[dingojazz]

If you have to write a novel to get your point across, it makes it seem like you are trying to convince yourself.

Consolidate your thoughts dude. That was so long winded it reminded me of a old woman's rant about her family problems.

[troy]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Jazz were the youngest team by average age in the Playoffs.

When was the last time a young team really did anything.

WHile boozer and Okur may not become much better defensively, through sheer repitition they will get better all around.

This team needs time, not changes.

Remember when we would sweep the very young Lakers. The fans wanted to rebuild. All they needed was time.

The only thing I worry about is money. The day will come when hard choices have to be made, like brewers, millsap, and derons money. Who of the okur, boozer, ak gets a pay raise. We all know someof the players will leave because of the cap. We will lose in talent level. But we gain in expierence.

This team was not far off. Some of our competition is getting really old. Our day is comming.

Unless of course Stern has his say so.

This is exactly the type of opinion i disagree with.
Saying this team just need time to win the championship is being increbly blind in my eyes.
The reason is told in my original post.
This team is not that young. If we have one of the smallest average age in the playoffs it's because of guys like Fesenko , Almond , Miles , etc... that barely plays.
When you look at our core you see immediately that he is not that young :
Okur , Boozer and Kirilenko all played six or more years in the league !
Even if you admit that Kirilenko is not part of the core , that's still two huge players for us.
Actually it's two third of our core , Deron being the other third.

Furthermore like i've said before , this team was FAR from being "not far off" like you claim. I don't know which playoffs you're watching.
I'm not even sure we've lead once in the 4th quarter on the Lakers floor (wow) . I'm sure though that we wouldn't have taken the Spurs to a seven game like the Hornets.
There is at least two teams that are better than us and it's not even close. The Hornets , Suns also played better than us in this postseason.

This team is not going anywhere as long as our inside defense remains that bad.

[dr0welf]

It is hard to say the Hornets and Suns played better as they played different teams. And the Hornets had home court.

I do agree our inside defense cannot be that bad. The problem with your synopsis is that you point out the game overall. Look at the games in LA we had horrible starts and came back in all of them. We had opportunities to tie or take the lead in 2 of the 3 before having to foul for time purposes. We played great defense in the fourth quarters so we know they can play defense. The problem is why does it take them that long to get going. Why do they not get motivated for the games away from home.

This is something they haven't been able to answer all year and it got really obvious during the playoffs. This is where the age question comes in because we are a young team and inconsistencies standardly come with young teams.

And honestly we were not "FAR" from winning the series as we did come back and in game 2, 5, and 6 we had chances to turn those games into W's at the end and just missed out.

[troy]

The problem with your synopsis is that you point out the game overall. Look at the games in LA we had horrible starts and came back in all of them. We had opportunities to tie or take the lead in 2 of the 3 before having to foul for time purposes. We played great defense in the fourth quarters so we know they can play defense. The problem is why does it take them that long to get going. Why do they not get motivated for the games away from home.

You really think what you say ? That we just lose because we can't start a game correctly ?
If we can't start the game correctly it's just that we WEREN'T BETTER than them !

You tell me that we played great defense in the fourth quarter but where did you got this idea :
We took an average of 28.2 pts in the fourth quarters which is equivalent to 112pts per game !
Actually we outscored the Lakers in the 4th quarter JUST ONCE , in the last game !! I repeat : We outscored the lakers just once in the 4th quarter !!!!

Well this stat confirms that the beginning of the game was not the issue after all.

This should tell you that our team is not "close" to the title at all.
I don't understand when i see stuff like this :

And honestly we were not "FAR" from winning the series as we did come back and in game 2, 5, and 6 we had chances to turn those games into W's at the end and just missed out.

We didn't get blown out in game 2 , 5 and 6 but we never were in a good position either ! This is the closest we have been in the 4th of each loss :
- 4pts , 5 min from the end (game 1)
- 5pts , 6min from the end (game 2)
- tied , 10 min from the end (game 5)
- 3pts , few seconds from the end (game 6)

In comparison , were 3pts down at 3min from the end in game 3 and in game 4 they FORCED AN OVERTIME.
They were closer to win game 4 than we ever were of winning a game in LA .
But still you're blinded and think we weren't far from the lakers in that series.
We got dominated almost every time in the 4th that's all i have to say. Wake up!


The home/away issue : Everybody says that our players are disappointing on the road , they lack concentration and motivation.
I now think it's not the main issue . More than anything the way we're called by the refs at home and on the road is the biggest reason or results are so much better at home :

In this series at home :
Utah fouls : 27 , Lakers fouls : 26.7

Away :
Utah fouls : 31.3 , Lakers fouls : 22.3


To put it simply , we have a very physical team. We're the team that takes the most free throws and give the most free throws.
So game calling is important for us.
That's why away from home , when the refs favors the opponent , we have trouble winning games.
That is it and it has nothing to do with concentration.

[Fido]

...am i just the most pessimistic Jazz fan...

Pretty much.

There is some truth here as well as some total BS. But after all that chatter about why the Jazz don't measure up, you come to the same conclusion that many already do--the team has to make a move. Where I was really disappointed is after all that typing to convey what you feel are the problems, you don't propose a solution other than a "big move". If you know another team like the Grizzlies looking to dump a star center for your leftovers, please give KOC a call.

[ColdBlue]

To put it simply , we have a very physical team. We're the team that takes the most free throws and give the most free throws.
So game calling is important for us.
That's why away from home , when the refs favors the opponent , we have trouble winning games.
That is it and it has nothing to do with concentration.

By this reasoning (which is incredibly oversimplified and unrelative) you should be thinking a coaching change is needed, and that a physical team can only be mediocre... winning at home and losing on the road due to officiating bias.

Also, if you are going to play physical ball, more mental concentration is needed. You have to know where the line is.

[troy]

Where I was really disappointed is after all that typing to convey what you feel are the problems, you don't propose a solution other than a "big move". If you know another team like the Grizzlies looking to dump a star center for your leftovers, please give KOC a call.

Who says we have to get a star for leftovers ? The Jazz has great assets to offer in a trade :
Boozer or Okur
CJ/Brewer/Almond even Korver
Kirilenko
2010 Knick pick

The Jazz has a lot to offer , that's why it would be disappointing if the Jazz does nothing and doesn't try to get a guy like Kaman , Bogut or Okafor : a center that plays on both end of the floor.

By this reasoning (which is incredibly oversimplified and unrelative) you should be thinking a coaching change is needed, and that a physical team can only be mediocre... winning at home and losing on the road due to officiating bias.

Also, if you are going to play physical ball, more mental concentration is needed. You have to know where the line is.

Not necessary more concentration , just better defense. The Jazz team is forced to do to that many fouls because they can't stay in front of anybody.
Utah is a physical team offensively , getting a lot of basket in the paint and getting free throws : that's a good thing.
On the other hand Utah is physical defensively only because they foul a lot.

I don't think a physical team can't win on the road it's just that Utah is a bad defensive physical team.
Getting a Chris Kaman would make them way more physical and way way better defensively.