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How much better would the Utah Jazz have been with prime 1985-89 Eaton? Do they win any championships?

That's an upgrade over Ostertag, but by how much? Interesting thought experiment, I think they'd have won at least one title with Eaton.

70sFan wrote:That's an upgrade over Ostertag, but by how much? Interesting thought experiment, I think they'd have won at least one title with Eaton.

wouldnt he ruin their spacing and slow down the offende tho? of course the defense improvement likely would be worth it

falcolombardi wrote:

70sFan wrote:That's an upgrade over Ostertag, but by how much? Interesting thought experiment, I think they'd have won at least one title with Eaton.

wouldnt he ruin their spacing and slow down the offende tho? of course the defense improvement likely would be worth it

Not really, you could just camp him behind the 3pt line like they did with Ostertag or Foster and a defender would have to stay close to them because of the illegal defense rule. By the late 90s Slone understood how to scheme well enough to negate the offensive shortcomings of players like this.

Who's roster spot/salary is he taking?

If they were playing a "legitimate" center (and they weren't always in '98, looking at their playoff minutes) ... their backups tended to be pretty ugly. Greg Foster by the boxscore and scouting book reviews, gave little evidence of being a replacement level player (looks clearly below - fwiw, seems fairly box effective, efficient in the very small sample of his '97 finals). So there's a potential for a huge upgrade there by an interpretation where he's just added (or in for a low end player e.g. Foster).

It's not quite so much a change of looks (part of the advantage of having an extreme player as not necessarily a starter) if Ostertag is the other center though they can still change it up by going Malone at C (Keefe or Carr PF).

Eaton's defense probably could've gotten them past Houston in 95 1st round and then who knows how far they'd have gotten. Think they beat Seattle in 96 and who knows against the Bulls. They have a better chance in 97 and 98 also. Eaton could be a real big factor in a series.

They still win 0 titles. Their biggest problem those years was they did not have a second go to scorer to compliment Malone that could generate his own offence.

And Eaton doesn't solve that

Greg Ostertag wasn't much of a downgrade from Eaton. He performed very well in the 97 playoffs (see his defensive series vs Shaq and also his game 6 vs Olajuwon in the WCF) and Eaton wasn't any more or less a scorer than was.

FuShengTHEGreat wrote:They still win 0 titles. Their biggest problem those years was they did not have a second go to scorer to compliment Malone that could generate his own offence.

And Eaton doesn't solve that

Greg Ostertag wasn't much of a downgrade from Eaton. He performed very well in the 97 playoffs (see his defensive series vs Shaq and also his game 6 vs Olajuwon in the WCF) and Eaton wasn't any more or less a scorer than was.

I would say Eaton was less of a scorer.
Eaton is a career 9.9 points per 100 possessions for a -438.8 TS Add
Ostertag is a career 12.8 points per 100 possessions (just below Eaton's peak of 12.9) for a -50.3 TS Add.

Owly wrote:

FuShengTHEGreat wrote:They still win 0 titles. Their biggest problem those years was they did not have a second go to scorer to compliment Malone that could generate his own offence.

And Eaton doesn't solve that

Greg Ostertag wasn't much of a downgrade from Eaton. He performed very well in the 97 playoffs (see his defensive series vs Shaq and also his game 6 vs Olajuwon in the WCF) and Eaton wasn't any more or less a scorer than was.

I would say Eaton was less of a scorer.
Eaton is a career 9.9 points per 100 possessions for a -438.8 TS Add
Ostertag is a career 12.8 points per 100 possessions (just below Eaton's peak of 12.9) for a -50.3 TS Add.

Eaton was quite dreadful on offense. More of a 10th option than a 5th option. This really limited his overall value to the point where IMO he wasn't clearly better overall then Ostertag. The teams around what should have been prime Stockton and Malone were really poorly built.

Eaton was quite dreadful on offense. More of a 10th option than a 5th option. This really limited his overall value

Limited his overall value? Utah from 1982-83 to 1991-92 had the 7th most wins, but ranked just 18th in offensive efficiency.

Yet they ranked 1st in defensive efficiency over that decade, and allowed the lowest 2pt FG%. You think Eaton might have had something to do with that? During those 10 years he was DPOY twice, made an all-defensive team 5 times - he averaged 300 blocked shots a season.

In the past 25 years a player blocked 300+ shots in a season just once.

Eaton's overall value was huge.