"You Gotta Love It Baby" Official Jazz thread

[MarkGrace]

It's G-Time bitches!

[LiveCoug]

Al Jefferson is still a bad defender.

[Donuthole]

Hacking the Grantland article, I see.

WTF? I swear on all that is holy that I haven't read any Grantland article regarding the Jazz. I was in Reno over the trade deadline and aftermath. They barely have internet there.

[MarkGrace]

WTF? I swear on all that is holy that I haven't read any Grantland article regarding the Jazz. I was in Reno over the trade deadline and aftermath. They barely have internet there.

I was just teasing. There was a Grantland article earlier today that said something similar. Actually, something similar to what we both said.

The Utah Jazz

The trade deadline villains, roundly chastised for holding onto Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson, both impending free agents, despite zero evidence Utah could have nabbed much in the way of useful long-term assets for either one. Nobody was willing to deal a future first-round pick for a rental player, and it’s unclear how serious the Eric Bledsoe–Millsap talks actually got at the highest levels. And Utah’s inaction doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t try some things; remember, this is the front office that caught even the most inside of league insiders by surprise with the Deron Williams deal. People must take some kind of loyalty oath before joining the Jazz front office.

Look, it’s true Utah can be difficult to deal with; it’s hard to find even a single executive who would say Utah was really interested in talking turkey over the last month. The Jazz do not appear to have been proactive or all that interested in incoming calls.

But they’re so flush with cap room this summer that even the mammoth cap holds attached to Jefferson and Millsap don’t soak up all their open space. (They have other cap holds that could take them over the cap, depending on how they want to navigate July.) That will give Utah enormous flexibility, even if they lose one of these guys without compensation in a market crowded with cap-space teams. They could re-sign one and sign-and-trade the other for a trade exception and other assets, which would allow them to take on someone else’s long-term salary later; this is basically how the Jazz acquired Jefferson from Minnesota. The number of teams with space, plus new prohibitions on sign-and-trades for tax teams, will hurt the sign-and-trade market a bit, but it will be there, especially for Millsap.

And losing Jefferson for nothing, or almost nothing, wouldn’t be a disaster. The Hawks may well have been better off in the long run taking exactly that course with Joe Johnson instead of re-signing him to a ludicrous super-max contract in 2010 — a contract that paralyzed their franchise until they off-loaded him to the Nets. Jefferson is a nice offensive player, but he’s a huge liability on defense in a pick-and-roll league, and he’s about to hit the wrong side of the aging curve. No team should be in a rush to pay him $12 million per year, though someone probably will. Millsap is a better all-around player, and the Jazz have to nail this decision if they indeed intend to keep one of their starting bigs, even with Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter requiring more minutes.

Favors, by the way, is shooting a career-worst 47.8 percent and hasn’t quite looked up to assuming a larger offensive role. But he’s not even 22 yet, and he should be an impact player for a long, long time.

Utah may well have misplayed its hand here, but if they did so, it was likely by waiting too long to face a big organizational decision to maintain a “blah” playoff team with no chance of doing real damage; the right move might have been to deal one of these guys a year earlier, when they weren’t the short-term rentals they are today.

But what we don’t know outweighs what we know, by a considerable margin, and Utah will be ultra-flexible in July. Let’s see what they do.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/52210/youre-on-notice-the-players-to-watch-post-trade-deadline

[Donuthole]

I was just teasing. There was a Grantland article earlier today that said something similar. Actually, something similar to what we both said.


http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-tr...trade-deadline

Phew. I'm just glad I can lay rightful claim to the name Derenes Kantavors.

[MarkGrace]

Phew. I'm just glad I can lay rightful claim to the name Derenes Kantavors.

Isn't that the hot chick on Game of Thrones that's dating Seth MacFarlane?

[MarkGrace]

Tinsley in the dog house. Doesn't get the start and burks first pg off the bench.

[LiveCoug]

Uggh.

[Blueintheface]

Weird. Cromagnon The Asshat goes to the bench and 5 players are allowed to play team basketball and the lead is cut to one. I hate that Corbin will insert him in 3 min.

[cougjunkie]

Re: "You Gotta Love It Baby" Official Jazz thread

I never want to hear you guys rip Als defense again. Huge steal on KG.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

[Blueintheface]

I never want to hear you guys rip Als defense again. Huge steal on KG.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

Lol.

[Blueintheface]

No Williams. No Foye. No Tinsley. Gotta say, Corbin seems to be making substitutions based upon flow for once.

[MarkGrace]

Well, shit.

[smokymountainrain]

Riddle me this: 1 second left in the game, down by 3. You have Sap, Hayward, Burks, Foye - all can hit the three - and Jefferson. Who should take the ball out of bounds?

[MarkGrace]

Riddle me this: 1 second left in the game, down by 3. You have Sap, Hayward, Burks, Foye - all can hit the three - and Jefferson. Who should take the ball out of bounds?

And the play is designed for the shooter to receive the ball running full speed AWAY from the hoop with no time to do anything other than catch and shoot.