"You Gotta Love It Baby" Official Jazz thread

[Eddie]

I've never subscribed to the theory of wanting your team to do poorly in order to move up the draft board - and I still don't. But there is a small part of me that would get a little bit of pleasure if the Jazz didn't make the playoffs this year.

OK - front office and coaches. Explain to me now how it was SO worth it to continue giving all the minutes to veterans who are getting you no where (because you wanted to make the playoffs) instead of developing younger players that may actually have a future (and would be further along to helping you actually win more games in the future - well...at least offering hope of more than a first round sweep at some point...if you had bothered to play them and get them some experience that is...).

I haven't spent much time watching Jazz games this year. And I'm kind of glad about that.

[The_Douger]

I've never subscribed to the theory of wanting your team to do poorly in order to move up the draft board - and I still don't. But there is a small part of me that would get a little bit of pleasure if the Jazz didn't make the playoffs this year.

OK - front office and coaches. Explain to me now how it was SO worth it to continue giving all the minutes to veterans who are getting you no where (because you wanted to make the playoffs) instead of developing younger players that may actually have a future (and would be further along to helping you actually win more games in the future - well...at least offering hope of more than a first round sweep at some point...if you had bothered to play them and get them some experience that is...).

I haven't spent much time watching Jazz games this year. And I'm kind of glad about that.

That's where I'm at. I don't want to see them rewarded for their stupidity this year. Playing guys like Favors, Burks, and Kanter as little as they have is nothing short of ridiculous. I don't want the ownership group to reap the rewards of making the playoffs when they've given us such a bad product this year. People will get behind a young team that's coming together, and they'll accept some losses if the team is progressing. People won't get behind a team like this, where you don't feel like the best guys are getting the minutes, and people who have no future here are getting significant time and not getting it done.

[smokymountainrain]

The interesting thing about this is that there doesn't seem to be much evidence that playing the youth leads to more losses. In fact there seems to be a quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

[MarkGrace]

These last couple losses have just killed me. Normally I'd take the kids playing well as a silver lining in a loss, but they've played so well and gotten so many minutes that I'd really like to see them get the win out of it.

[Eddie]

The interesting thing about this is that there doesn't seem to be much evidence that playing the youth leads to more losses. In fact there seems to be a quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Exactly.

And regardless of how well the younger players do once they get a little bit of time in the game to get up to speed, it always comes back to throwing the "veterans" back out there for the majority of the minutes. I struggle to figure out why you would rather have veterans flail around and lose - knowing that they are veterans and you know what they are and what you'll get from them; than have the youth play more minutes and see what they are capable of and if they can learn from their mistakes.

Now - I get the Sloan theory of not wanting a kid to get taken to the woodshed each night and eventually lose all of his confidence. But it seems like you could come up with a plan that includes progressively adding more minutes. And feel free to tell the veterans "hey - if you produce, you'll get more minutes. If you don't, we're going to give the youth a shot to see what they can do."

[MarkGrace]

The last 82games update was a couple weeks ago, but I was poking around the other day to check out some of Enes' numbers. Favors usually gets pointed to as our best interior defender (and his numbers are again good), but Enes in having a terrific defensive season so far (obviously his minutes aren't huge). Cribbing from a post I made at JH's.

Favors defense on/off 100 possessions: -1.5
Favors opponent PER: 15.3

Enes defense on/off 100 possessions: -7.1
Enes opponent PER: 12.9

Also, ESPN did a ranking of the 10 best interior defenders. The ranking was based on 6 metrics, and Enes was the league leader in one of them:

• Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus: Kevin Garnett (plus-5.5 points per 100 possessions for the defensive component of the statistic)
• Points per isolation allowed: Larry Sanders (0.32 points per isolation allowed)
• Defensive isolation usage: Enes Kanter (3.2 isolations per 100 possessions)
• Overall points per play allowed: Ronny Turiaf (0.62 points per play allowed)
• Steals-plus-blocks percentage: Larry Sanders (10.65 percent)
• Team opponent interior PER: Los Angeles Clippers (14.8)

Every other guy to lead a category is a monster defender, and of course the LAC interior is anchored by Jordan (also a great defensive player). Favors is of course the better shot blocker, but all data points toward Enes having the superior defensive season to this point.

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8920697/nba-ranking-league-top-10-interior-defenders

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

These last couple losses have just killed me. Normally I'd take the kids playing well as a silver lining in a loss, but they've played so well and gotten so many minutes that I'd really like to see them get the win out of it.

Which is why the default coaching to lean on Foye, Mo, and Paul late in the game last night was such a disaster and so incredibly frustrating.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

The next game against Chicago is a big one for Kanter and Favors. Last time Utah played the Bulls, Corbin pulled Kanter as soon as he got his shot blocked by Taj Gibson. Sharing yet another philosophy with Jerry, Corbin has talked about not wanting to hurt a young guy's confidence by having him go up against a big time defender or someone that is a tough match-up...because we all know yanking a guy and planting him on the bench because he got his shot blocked is a great way to build confidence. But if Jefferson is still out, Ty will be forced to give extended minutes to Favors and Kanter against Noah and Gibson and a team that is incredibly well coached defensively. And I'm sure Kanter and Favors will struggle a lot trying to get decent shots off against those post defenders. But I'm intrigued to see what counters they can come up with, or how they react emotionally to what it likely to be a tough go on offense.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Jazz sign Travis Leslie from the d-league.

Travis says one thing most people don't know about him is that he can draw. Travis and Jeremy should be good end-of-the-bench buddies.

[smokymountainrain]

Jazz sign Travis Leslie from the d-league.

Travis says one thing most people don't know about him is that he can draw. Travis and Jeremy should be good end-of-the-bench buddies.

One of the few people in the world who can dunk better than Evans too.

[USUC]

Good hell the Jazz can't rebound tonight.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Starting guards were absolutely stellar tonight.

[MarkGrace]

Holy shit. These guys just can't catch a break.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

@KevinDing
Staples media dining room (including Lakers officials) just exploded with roar in response to Belinelli's go-ahead 3-pointer for CHI vs. UT.

Do they want Corbin fired too?

[LiveCoug]

LOL.