"You Gotta Love It Baby" Official Jazz thread

[MarkGrace]

A whopping 15 points in the 1st quarter.

Looks like Ty took out the starters pretty quick.

[Jacob]

Interesting move to bench Tinsley after the win steak. And 2nd team O is dysfunctional.
But we have a Gerald Green sighting.

[Jacob]

just like that the jazz go on a run. and carolle becomes the best shooter on the team

[MarkGrace]

So far an impressive bounce back from last night. Hopefully they don't crash in the 2nd.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

"I feel like all CJ needs is one game to get his confidence back."

Yep Harpring, that is all CJ needs.

[CJF]

Does Watson have money on this game? What was that pass he just made?

[MarkGrace]

I knew I'd jinx us by saying something positive. I have that ability.

[MarkGrace]

Very impressive.

[MarkGrace]

Interesting move to bench Tinsley after the win steak. And 2nd team O is dysfunctional.
But we have a Gerald Green sighting.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. Earl had made some public complaints about losing his spot, and tonight he gets backup minutes over Tinsley. I wonder if Ty will rotate using them at the backup spot? I don't know that I've ever seen that before, but I'm not sure he knows what to do right now.

[Jacob]

I still think Cho has it right here, and that the Jazz should have pursued a similar strategy this year. I.e. Jefferson should have been traded, Jazz should have picked up a young PG instead of 2 old backups. Young guys should have played more. Better lottery pick. Etc. If the Jazz end up not trading Jefferson at all, it would have been much better to have amnestied him. I'm not very interested in making the playoffs this year. I'm interested in a contender 2-3 years from now.

Cho says he made something like that a condition of his joining the team. "They called me the day after I got let go by Portland," he recalls of the Bobcats. Cho had three years left on his Portland contract, and had that finest of luxuries -- he simply didn't have to work. "I had thought about taking some time off, or teaching at a high school," he told me on a recent episode of TrueHoop TV. "I thought about maybe coaching high school tennis, which I've wanted to do for a long time."

But he flew to Charlotte for a conversation that came down to a key moment, when Cho asked if the Bobcats really wanted to win. As in, did they want to win so badly that they'd be willing to follow in the footsteps of Cho's former employer, the Thunder, who won 20 games one season, and then 23 the next, in the process of amassing the core of their current team?

In other words, Cho was asking, were they willing to lose? "Are you willing," Cho remembers asking, "to take a step back to take two steps forward?"

Cho says the room answered, unanimously, "yes." A few months later, that team is 7-40.

Cho explains how the Thunder did it. When they had cap room, they didn't use it. Massive losing streaks helped too. The team's point guard of the future (Russell Westbrook) learned on the job while leading the league in turnovers.

There is no suggestion that any of the players or coaches didn't try their hardest. But the fact is the front office trotted out a young, cheap and, frankly, bad team for a good long time. Intentionally. During those same years they could have been, with a different strategy, far more competitive. But if they had done that, they'd never be leading the Western Conference right now, because they wouldn't have gotten the good players that came with the good picks that came from losing.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

I still think Cho has it right here, and that the Jazz should have pursued a similar strategy this year. I.e. Jefferson should have been traded, Jazz should have picked up a young PG instead of 2 old backups. Young guys should have played more. Better lottery pick. Etc. If the Jazz end up not trading Jefferson at all, it would have been much better to have amnestied him. I'm not very interested in making the playoffs this year. I'm interested in a contender 2-3 years from now.

What article was that from? I didn't think it was the OKC Unicorns piece up on ESPN:

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...-city-unicorns


I agree with much of what was said in the the Unicorn article, in that trying to mimic the Thunder model (if it can really be called that) isn't going to work out like it did for OKC the majority of the time. You have to draft right, and you have to draft the right kind of players who will stay motivated through some losing.

But if any team was in a position to really go for it, Utah was. (and maybe Minnesota as well)

1) Favors
2) Had Favors and Hayward on the team for a year already
3) Two lottery picks in 2011 and likely two lottery picks in 2012 if the team had decided to go forward with a full youth movement
4) Memo's trade exception, Miles' expiring contract this year, the expiring contracts of Jefferson, Bell, and Harris next year
5) Amnesty provision

Using this year as evidence it appears Utah is trying to mimic Memphis more than they are OKC. I wonder what our outlook would be right now had the team moved Jefferson, given more time to the young players, and the team was sitting with the 9th and 10th picks this year. But they'll still have a lot of assets to move around this off-season. Will they choose to make big changes, or do they view this year as a moderate success, feeling they just need some tweaking and more time to gel to take a big step forward?

[SloanHater]

I still think Cho has it right here, and that the Jazz should have pursued a similar strategy this year. I.e. Jefferson should have been traded, Jazz should have picked up a young PG instead of 2 old backups. Young guys should have played more. Better lottery pick. Etc. If the Jazz end up not trading Jefferson at all, it would have been much better to have amnestied him. I'm not very interested in making the playoffs this year. I'm interested in a contender 2-3 years from now.

After a few days in SLC I remember why most Jazz fans are such morons. You simply parrot the terrible sports talk radio of SLC.

Big Al is an All-Star. The Jazz couldn't have gotten an All-Star in return THIS year, so why trade him? Even better, simply cut him and get NOTHING in return.

If the Jazz feel that Favors and Kanter are ready next year, Jefferson will be gone, when his value is at its peak. Ie expiring contract and with the possibility to resign long-term.

Learn something about the salary cap/CBA and keep your terrible ideas to yourself.

[MarkGrace]

Al Jeff off to a hot start against his former club.

[LiveCoug]

Al Jeff off to a hot start against his former club.

7 shots in 10 minutes. Awesome.

[San Juan Sun]

Ugh. Shot clock woes.