Interesting stat from KOC

Racer X · Post #1 » by **Racer X** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:28 am

KOC was on Lockes show on Monday and gave an interesting stat and take on the Jazz season thus far.
He labeled Deron, Booze, AK, Memo and Millsap as the 5 best players on the team. Those 5 guys have yet to play a game together this season. More interestingly though he claimed that when only one of those guys is out of the lineup the Jazz are 22-7. This was before San Antonio so this would mean that when two or more of those 5 guys were out we are a mere 3-13.

This points to a few things. 1) The Jazz are a team that wins by committee. No one guy on this team is capable of putting this team on his back and carrying them to victory, not even Deron. 2) The Jazz are not as deep as everyone thought. 3) Can the Jazz be a championship team without a guy that is capable of winning a game with everyone on his back? I would argue no. I think the Pistons last championship team is the only team I can think of that won a championship without a guy like this.

HammerDunk · Post #2 » by **HammerDunk** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:27 am

His name was Boozer. I am about 99% sure that if he stayed healthy to this point in the season, regardless of what happened to the other players on the team, we are in the top 4 of the West. He started the year with awesome stats, basically carrying the team. We HAD a better bench than the league knew, but now the secret on Millsap is out, and we aren't going to be able to keep the bench the way it was. This team, if it were healthy, would be incredibly deep. Millsap and AK off the bench? Come on...

Unfortunately, Boozer's injury has a much deeper effect than just a less than desirable record. There is no way we can keep both him and Sap at the end of this season due to the massive increase in paycheck Millsap has deservedly earned. Had he not gone down, we would perhaps been able to hang on to both, and that would mean a very much championship caliber team. Unfortunately, we will likely only get 1 shot at it with that lineup, and it is going to have to be from a lower seed. Welcome to sucktown...

nghedman · Post #3 » by **nghedman** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:57 am

Who is the sixth?

carrottop12 · Post #4 » by **carrottop12** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:47 am

^^^

Jerry Sloan.

drivewayball · Post #5 » by **drivewayball** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:28 pm

It could be true that those are the five best players on the current roster.... and it could be the problem. Bye,bye Kirilenko and Okur.

Denizfeital · Post #6 » by **Denizfeital** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:43 pm

I think we have a shot to win it all. And the name is Boozer.

If (a big if here) he comes back on time, we still can make some noise this season.

Otherwise, we re dead.

Regards,

erudite23 · Post #7 » by **erudite23** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 10:32 pm

The reason why its so hard to win with a committee is because of the max player cap. What happens is that NBA players almost always get overpaid when they come up for FA. The only ones who don't are max players, because they get capped out. So you can have a guy like LeBron giving you 25m worth of production for 15mil, while a guy like Luol Deng gives you 9mil worth of production for 11mil in cost. This makes it more cost effective to have big time guys, while at the same time giving you a guy that can carry the team on his back.

The worst type of player to have in the NBA is the guy who is in the 10mil range, because his value and production will shift so much, and one or two teams will inevitably give him a contract that is not only based upon what he can give you now, but what he might be able to give you down the road. This is what ruined the careers of Keith Van Horn, Austin Croshere, AK, Al Harrington....I could go on all day. When you have a good amount of success--like the Jazz have had over the last two seasons--and you don't have that one guy that it can be attributed to, all the "pretty good" guys that you have become over-valued and your payroll gets out of control, or you lose players you should have been able to keep and are forced to rely on your FO to keep the talent pipeline perpetually full (which is nearly impossible to do).

The Jazz have to confront this reality. Memo is going to get overpaid by someone. He isn't worth a penny over 10mil, and I would argue that his ideal salary is around 9ish. AK is worth 10 even. Millsap is worth maybe 10.

In order for the Jazz to move forward as a dominant team, we're going to have to have Deron move into the realm of unstoppable force of nature that Chris Paul is in right now, while still keeping good players around him. The other thing we're going to have to do is get defensive minded players that earn their money on that end of the floor. For some reason, these types don't ever get paid what their value is. It just goes to show that all this talk about the value of defense doesn't hold water in the minds of the FO and even most coaches, because guys who earn their money on defense don't get paid nearly like the guys who put up big offensive numbers. Bruce Bowen is a perfect example. That dude is as good a perimeter defender as there has been in the league since Pippen fell off, and he got a contract paying him 6-8mil a year at his absolute peak. If he was as good on offense as he was on defense, he would have been making 15mil a year, minimum. That says it all.

Our salary cap problems is that most of our guys are offensive guys. We don't have anyone who is a good set shooter/rebounder/passer that kills it on the defensive end and doesn't get much attention for what he does. We need at least two guys like that if we're going to be serious contenders, because we can't afford to have 6 or 7 guys on the team who all make at least 6 mil a year while retaining our big money guys. We just can't.