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MalonesElbows wrote:I'm not expecting much. The Jazz have no absolutely no talent or athleticism in the 6'6" to 6'8" range, critical for defending the elite wings of the NBA. Conley is gone and was instrumental into getting Utah off to a good start next year. The Jazz rookies might be promising, but outside of superstars, rookies do not contribute to winning in the NBA. 38 wins looks optimistic.

Agbaji is 6'6" in shoes. He's long and athletic enough to guard wings. Both Lauri and Collins are bigger than 6'8" and capable of containing wings. Jazz are a long, athletic and deep team.

The only meaningful loss from last season's roster is Conley, while the Jazz added Collins. Meanwhile, everyone else should improve due to personal development. Jazz should be a .500 team at least, imo.

Jiipee84 wrote:

bkohler wrote:Lauri's health is hard to gauge because he's had fluke injuries: Ankle Sprains, Right Hip stress fractures, Oblique strain, and Shoulder issues. He's definitely not Zion, but he's not exactly Cal Ripken, either.

I hope that he can maintain this level of play with the wear and tear that comes with it. But so far, the numbers don't lie, he's only played 75% of the games he's been eligible to play in. I think you have to consider that a factor when projecting forward.

Bulls beer league level player development and medical staffs
didn't do much favors for Lauri in those 4 years what he spent in Chicago.
So it is kinda stupid to think that Lauri is injury prone 4 years ago was 4 years go and now is now.
Lauri has fixed a lot of his summer workouts etc and you can see results now if you're not totally blind.

Did someone dare you to be as disrespectful and insulting as you could on a RGM post or something? If so- nice work.

Five more wins than last year should put the Jazz in the playoffs.
For a rebuilding team; that's fairly nice and quite realistic.
With a sizeable number of draft picks in the hopper; I'd say Utah is in decent shape to be a potential contender in a couple of years.

Sparky6string wrote:

Jiipee84 wrote:

bkohler wrote:Lauri's health is hard to gauge because he's had fluke injuries: Ankle Sprains, Right Hip stress fractures, Oblique strain, and Shoulder issues. He's definitely not Zion, but he's not exactly Cal Ripken, either.

I hope that he can maintain this level of play with the wear and tear that comes with it. But so far, the numbers don't lie, he's only played 75% of the games he's been eligible to play in. I think you have to consider that a factor when projecting forward.

Bulls beer league level player development and medical staffs
didn't do much favors for Lauri in those 4 years what he spent in Chicago.
So it is kinda stupid to think that Lauri is injury prone 4 years ago was 4 years go and now is now.
Lauri has fixed a lot of his summer workouts etc and you can see results now if you're not totally blind.

Did someone dare you to be as disrespectful and insulting as you could on a RGM post or something? If so- nice work.

Bulls board probably made him pretty jaded . From year 3 to last year it was non-stop Lauri bashing over there.

Reevaluating my stance after seeing the whole off-season… I still think we’re going to be bad but maybe not awful? My prediction is 35 wins and the 7th pick in the draft.

I think we’ll move two or three rotation pieces this year in an effort to find more long term options. Probably Clarkson, Kelly and Tht.

They need to be bad.

JazzUte88 wrote:They need to be bad.

I honestly think there’s a good chance that’s the plan in 2025. Try send the pick to OKC this year, build the value of players to be moved in the off-season

The West is better this year, and I don't think we meaningfully improved. That's not a bad thing, the young guys are going to develop this year and we will have a better idea of who the core pieces are. We should have assets to move, and I think the future is bright.

Too talented to be bad and you don’t want Lauri to walk by wasting him in his best year. Great coach too. Tanked last year to avoid 8 seed/play-in for one more last lotto pick. Trading for Collins was a winning move. He’s 20 and 10 when featured. They also tried to trade for both Porzingis and Holiday in the offseason

vtime wrote:Too talented to be bad and you don’t want Lauri to walk by wasting him in his best year. Great coach too. Tanked last year to avoid 8 seed/play-in for one more last lotto pick. Trading for Collins was a winning move. He’s 20 and 10 when featured. They also tried to trade for both Porzingis and Holiday in the offseason

Where did you hear about them trying to trade for Porzingis and Holiday? Source?

TNJazz wrote:

vtime wrote:Too talented to be bad and you don’t want Lauri to walk by wasting him in his best year. Great coach too. Tanked last year to avoid 8 seed/play-in for one more last lotto pick. Trading for Collins was a winning move. He’s 20 and 10 when featured. They also tried to trade for both Porzingis and Holiday in the offseason

Where did you hear about them trying to trade for Porzingis and Holiday? Source?

The Porzingis rumor was circulated at the time and seems pretty credible. Don't know about the Holiday rumor but Locke covered it too in one of his latest podcasts.

https://www.slcdunk.com/2023/6/24/23772722/rumor-utah-jazz-were-interested-in-kristaps-porzingis-free-agency-2023

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/surprise-nba-team-was-in-on-jrue-holiday-before-blockbuster-trade-to-the-boston-celtics/ar-AA1hEzyc

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/brad-stevens-outbid-danny-ainge-jazz-in-jrue-holiday-trade-report/ar-AA1hEgqH

Why try to get Jrue Holiday (who I've liked a lot), who would have cost a lot of assets, when you have Kris Dunn, who is super cheap and four years younger? The Jazz apparent lack of love for Dunn is perplexing.

Need to remember too the Jazz caught a ton of breaks last season playing teams with injured stars.

With that said there are some worrisome aspects to this current roster.

First off I have doubts whether John Collins is a great fit. Even the fans in ATL seemed to think he would work better next to a shooting center that could create space. The fit with both Capela and Okongwu was not ideal. He and Kessler will be operating in the same space mainly being the roll man, etc. The organization seems to think they can just slot him into the Vanderbilt role but Collins is going to want touches. They don't have an established PG like they had last year in Conley to orchestrate the possessions either.

The guards are fairly interchangeable but they all have some deficiency be it with lack of playmaking or defense or shooting(THT). At least a guy like THT is on an expiring contract and can be sat but the same cannot be said of John Collins who is still owed $76 mil on his deal.

My guess this will be another season basically focused on asset accumulation and player development. I would expect a handful of players could potentially get dealt again this season as we near the trade deadline.

Not quite 10% of the way through the season but we’re 2 points away from having only one win. Seems like we might be awful. I honestly didn’t think we’d be this bad with this group, I assumed we’d be playing rookies big minutes, instead we’re bad with vets! Yikes i

bkohler wrote:Not quite 10% of the way through the season but we’re 2 points away from having only one win. Seems like we might be awful. I honestly didn’t think we’d be this bad with this group, I assumed we’d be playing rookies big minutes, instead we’re bad with vets! Yikes i

Kudos to you for making this thread back in February. During the pre-season rankings, I had the Jazz in the running for worst team in the West, primarily because I felt Ainge is still evaluating, but not really picking a direction. Lauri is excellent and still relatively young. However, who is the second best player on the Jazz? I think it's arguable for a few guys on any given night. And that's the problem. In Denver, they have four above average starters next to Jokic (who is the best player in the world).

This Hunger Games style backcourt situation makes no sense. And if the Jazz aren't going to try to win with Lauri, they should probably consider moving him soon for a haul and bottoming out. The only solidified positions on the roster are Markannen and Kessler IMO.

Chuck Everett wrote:Kudos to you for making this thread back in February.

I’m not sure my pessimism should be celebrated!

I share a lot of your views, I think it was a little unexpected by the front office how bad we are. I think they imagined we’d be somewhat like last year and that could let them showcase some players before the trade deadline and drive up their value.

Instead I think most of our players value has cratered.

Being bad when you mean to is okay. Being bad when you’re trying to be decent just sucks.

I went and looked at the team season stats, mostly to check if Jazz are really hunting for an all-time record in turnovers like it feels, and they pretty much confirmed the eye test evaluation "painful to watch, meh on offense, BAAD on defense".
Utah are leading the league in turnovers (17.8 is actually less than I expected) and opponent steals, 10 live ball giveaways leaking points in transition. At the other end they are 27th in opponent TOs and 29th in steals, so a huge discrepancy here, almost enough to explain the -8.3 points per game.
Mostly awful in every facet of defending (def.rating 29th): transition hurts the stats, but the Jazz are also fouling constantly (28th in fouls, 27th in opp. FTs), and still unable to stop people from getting buckets (28th in opp. 2P%, 22nd in blocks despite Kessler).
Offensively Utah are poor at scoring inside (25th in 2P% and 20th in FTs drawn) and OK in three point shooting. Special mention for being 29th in shots blocked; those blind drives from the guards should count effectively as live ball turnovers, yet Collins is actually just ahead of Sexton here, getting stuffed 1.5 times per game. He seemed a poor fit at both ends and has proven to be just that.
The only clear positive is offensive rebounding, 2nd in the league, and the +5.5 difference here is somewhat mitigating all the possessions thrown away by turnovers and bad forced shots, but transition D is the tradeoff here too.
Most of this feels like a natural consequence of starting 3 bigs, having no natural NBA wings and giving most guard minutes to guys whose ball control and decision making must be the worst in the league, while having zero interior defense in the second unit.
Usually being a high-mistake team at both ends implies youth, but somehow the Jazz have managed to assemble a rotation full of veterans whose collective basketball IQ, concentration and discipline is... not conducive to winning.
Oh well, there are other teams for me to watch. Guess I will mostly be enjoying the excellence of Nuggets and the fresh excitement of Spurs this season.

Jazz look like they'll be worst team. They must have not got the memo the Wemby sweepstakes are over
Clarkson has declined from age and not fit to be a go to option. John Collins doesn't look salvageable. Kessler has regressed.

Big Jim, some eye popping stats that really help explain just how bad this team really is currently. I had hopes of seeing an improvement especially after the start of last year and then the obvious tanking the last 1/4 of the season. Two opposite reasons why I felt this team wold be better. Primarily same core players that had such a terrific start last year and then the vets who were sidelined to end the season coming back with no sweepstakes in mind, seemed to blend into a hopeful improvement with the team. So far, just really bad basketball to endure, extremely disappointed. Having to rethink my optimism for this season at this point.

TNJazz wrote:Big Jim, some eye popping stats that really help explain just how bad this team really is currently. I had hopes of seeing an improvement especially after the start of last year and then the obvious tanking the last 1/4 of the season. Two opposite reasons why I felt this team wold be better. Primarily same core players that had such a terrific start last year and then the vets who were sidelined to end the season coming back with no sweepstakes in mind, seemed to blend into a hopeful improvement with the team. So far, just really bad basketball to endure, extremely disappointed. Having to rethink my optimism for this season at this point.

I wonder at some point if we wouldn't have been better keeping the continuity of having the young guys + Lauri be the core of the team and moving our vets who had been sitting? Seems like the meshing of all of it together has been difficult and might prove impossible.