I don't post much, and to be honest my interest in the Jazz took a huge hit this past season for various personal reasons, but the jazz have done nothing lately to convince me to watch religiously like I used to.
I can see both sides of the argument in this thread. On one hand their wait-and-see, cake-bake plan appears to be sort of working, albeit slowly. They should have made the playoffs this year based on SRS, and they will probably make the playoffs next year for reasons already pointed out.
On the other hand, goddamn if this isn't the least interesting NBA team going right now. Rudy Gobert and his standing reach is our only moderately interesting storyline in the last several years. Can you imagine being an opposing announcer calling Jazz games? It would be torture. All you can say about our best players is that they seem to be getting slightly better each year, that they play the game the right way, and one day might knock on the door of the allstar game.
Check out the Jazz's attendance at away games:
https://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/sort/awayAvg
Back in Deron's day we were much higher. That's because other teams could sell their fans on coming out to see our badass point guard play. Look at the timberwolves this past season. You can bet opposing marketing teams sold ticket packages with Towns and Wiggins yelling passionately on either side of the promo graphic. Favors and Hayward are going into their seventh season. It is too late for them to get this kind of hype. Their NBA fate is doomed to nice complementary guys, Kyle Lowry level stars in terms of name recognition.
This is bad, guys. Hype is important. Marketing teams can work with hype. Fans turn out to games because of hype. Right now, looking over the thirty teams, our Hype Index would be right down there with Brooklyn's, which is impressive considering how young this team is. You'd think we'd have something other than Gobert's defense to capture the imagination of fans.
That's the main reason I'm in favor of a huge shakeup this offseason. If the most compelling reason to watch next season is the return of an inexperienced and injured former fifth pick, I'm sorry but that's not going to make me count down the days until November. Another year of incremental improvement from within that--if injuries and fourth quarters start going our way--might get us fifty wins?
Ugh...
I mean, I'll still watch, but only because I don't really have anything better to do.
