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One week until training camp, what are we most excited about? What was the best news of the off season, and what can we expect this season?

I'm pumped.

Most Excited About: The Young guys - Favors, Hayward and Kanter
Best News: CJ, Howard, and (hopefully) Bell are goners, replaced by more efficient players who can actually shoot.
What We Can Expect: The Jazz should surpass media expectations - while most experts say they made only lateral changes, we know that the addition of athletic, shooting wings is going to ad new dimensions to this team. I imagine Favors will be getting 30mpg eventually, though it may take all season to get to that point. I'm hoping we move one of our bigs...right now I'm leaning toward Big Al, though he'd take a lot of our offense with him.

Bell has to be gone by Media day. What a mess it'll be if he is still on our roster.

Favors, Favors and more Favors!!!!!! Can't wait to see him play this year.......

Im excited the season is getting closer and we can see how the young guys have improved BUT I am scared to death of what Corbin might do this year. Im scared Corbin will start Millsap with Jefferson bringing Favors off the bench playing Favors 20 min per game bc he is afraid to upset the veterans on their free agent year contract run. A sprained ankle by Big Al leaving putting him out fo the 1st 5 games of the season would actually help the team as it would allow Corbin to go to Big Al and tell him to please come off the bench for the good of the team and not disrupt team chemistry. Unfortunately, Corbin does not have the balls to do that without an injury. Big Al should be our 6th man and I think Big Al even knows that but why would he agree to go to the bench costing him a lot of money in the off season unless a coach with Balls shows up but our coach is a loser.

As always is a nice day, to see how our players (an overall nba) have improve or not their shape.

Kanter promises to be like a rock.
We'll see about the other ones.

I'm excited to see how the wing play effects the offensive rotation on the floor and how it effects the inside game of Milsap, Favors and Al. Who ever learns to pass out of double teams or sees the floor best to get the ball to the open guy will play the most. I doubt it will be due to injury, or guts of the coach.

Also anxious to see how good is Murphy.

And of course because the talk on this board has been so much about players minutes and rotations etc, anxious to see how the players minutes are earned.

I'm curious to see if Hayward and Favors can make that next step, but
to be honest I'm not very excited about this season. I think it'll be a lot like last year, where the vets see the majority of the minutes and the Jazz fight for the 8th seed.

It just feels like the mediocrity treadmill to me.

^ i'm afraid this might happen, too

I'm very excited. I got the feeling at the end of last season that Ty finally realized Favors needs to be turned loose. Hayward was already getting good minutes, and I expect those to go up (he's likely, even, to lead the team in MPG) as he takes things up another level again this season.

I think the two guys that are likely to get lost in the shuffle are Burks and Kanter. I don't think it will be a disaster if Kanter hovers around 15 MPG again because he's so early in his development still, and one of Big Al/Millsap aren't going to hold him back beyond this season. However, I definitely foresee Burks getting frustrated when he sits on the bench watching Randy Foye gobble up his minutes.

I think the biggest issue is just that we'll have a Big Al-centric offense again when he's not in our long-term plans, which may delay Favors' and Hayward's development as "go-to" guys with world-killer instincts.

I think we are in serious danger of stagnating this year. Is Favors a measurable upgrade over either Al or Millsap? Maybe not. This year, at least. How good is Hayward capable of being? Is Burks ready to make a real jump or is he just another low-efficiency shot creator?


We could very easily win 45-46 games and sneak into the playoffs as a low seed and end up basically where we were at the end of last year. Either way, though, the important thing is that we discover what these young players are made of so that we know the moves that need to be made moving forward. Jefferson needs to be moved, as Millsap is the better long term fit with Kanter and Favors, but if its more profitable to move Sap, are we able to make the pieces work together?

These are the questions that need to be answered and the breaks that need to go our way. And this isn't a year that we want to be tanking, since this year's draft crop looks bleak at the moment.


That said, you're always excited at the beginning of the year, since you never know when things might just click and everything come together. I think we have the ability to win 50+ games and serve notice to the league that we are going to be in the mix for a long time. I can't wait.

We have a legit chance to shock the NBA world this season. Our team is much better than advertised... if our young guys keep on developing the way that they should, we should be competing for homecourt in the first round of the playoffs.

I, like always, will be unreasonably optimistic until proven wrong.

StocktonShorts wrote:I'm curious to see if Hayward and Favors can make that next step, but
to be honest I'm not very excited about this season.

I'm listening to Locke interview players today and now I'm officially excited. Hard not to cheer for these guys.

Pretty good interviews from Locke -- except the Jeremy Evans one, which is another of his embarrassing low-lights. And "I'm dead serious; I'll take your daughter out in the snow" was super-creepy too.

The59Sound wrote:Pretty good interviews from Locke -- except the Jeremy Evans one, which is another of his embarrassing low-lights. And "I'm dead serious; I'll take your daughter out in the snow" was super-creepy too.

I think I now understand what retiredcoach was getting at regarding Locke's stupid exuberance in interviews. He asks good questions, for the most part, but he reacts way too emotionally to their responses, and his voice is so shrill that some parts were unlistenable.

StocktonShorts wrote:

The59Sound wrote:Pretty good interviews from Locke -- except the Jeremy Evans one, which is another of his embarrassing low-lights. And "I'm dead serious; I'll take your daughter out in the snow" was super-creepy too.

I think I now understand what retiredcoach was getting at regarding Locke's stupid exuberance in interviews. He asks good questions, for the most part, but he reacts way too emotionally to their responses, and his voice is so shrill that some parts were unlistenable.

Yeah, I think that's about right. He reacts too strongly, and is so consumed by the need to have people believe he's friends with the players, that his legitimately insightful questions get lost in the shuffle and I find myself turning off or muting the interview.

Even beyond the Player Friendship Complex, he has a bizarre belief that listeners care about his personal life. Sorry, Locke. No one's tuning in to hear about your daughter making a grown-up quip while you were buying a gallon of cabinet enamel at Home Depot.

The59Sound wrote:Even beyond the Player Friendship Complex, he has a bizarre belief that listeners care about his personal life. Sorry, Locke. No one's tuning in to hear about your daughter making a grown-up quip while you were buying a gallon of cabinet enamel at Home Depot.

I'm roughly in the same place Locke is in terms of parenthood, so perhaps that's why his fatherhood anecdotes don't bother. Having said that, even I think he goes to that well a bit too often.

StocktonShorts wrote:

The59Sound wrote:Even beyond the Player Friendship Complex, he has a bizarre belief that listeners care about his personal life. Sorry, Locke. No one's tuning in to hear about your daughter making a grown-up quip while you were buying a gallon of cabinet enamel at Home Depot.

I'm roughly in the same place Locke is in terms of parenthood, so perhaps that's why his fatherhood anecdotes don't bother. Having said that, even I think he goes to that well a bit too often.

I'm sure that's true. My Mrs. and I haven't had our firstborn yet, so maybe I'll relax on that aspect of his "style" once I have the same frame of reference.