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Al Jefferson - second best big defender in NBA?

Archie Moses said:
Wow, can you imagine compiling all those stats together? Some people have way too much time on their hands.
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I thought the same thing, but I'm guessing he just took info straight from the site. No way he could have actually watched all the plays of each player and compiled the stats himself.
 
Great, so AJ is the 2nd best and Millsap is the 8th worst. Got it.

This brings balance to the force.
 
While I don't agree that Jefferson is the 2nd best, or anywhere close, he's not nearly as bad as he's made out to be. Where he's bad is in transition defense. But our transition defense is mostly bad because of how poor our system is. Our guys are always looking for their man on transition, not guarding the court and adjusting once the break has been stopped. AK is really the only guy we have that truly plays the break the right way. He gets back, gets to the middle, and drops anchor. Unfortunately, nobody is on the same page with him. That said, Al needs to run a little harder.
 
billyshelby said:
While I don't agree that Jefferson is the 2nd best, or anywhere close, he's not nearly as bad as he's made out to be. Where he's bad is in transition defense. But our transition defense is mostly bad because of how poor our system is. Our guys are always looking for their man on transition, not guarding the court and adjusting once the break has been stopped. AK is really the only guy we have that truly plays the break the right way. He gets back, gets to the middle, and drops anchor. Unfortunately, nobody is on the same page with him. That said, Al needs to run a little harder.
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My biggest gripe with Big Al is that doesn't box out harder. I think a lot of this is he needs to improve his strength and conditioning.
 
Qman said:
My biggest gripe with Big Al is that doesn't box out harder. I think a lot of this is he needs to improve his strength and conditioning.
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I don't disagree. The only thing I would say about that is we had such a poor defensive system this year that guys were almost always lost in space. It's easy to say guys didn't block out, but if you're not actually guarding someone, as is the case with poor switches, you don't have anyone to block out.

I'm not excusing Al. The big flaw in his rebounding game is he isn't nearly as physical as he should be. He's got the body, and I think he has the will, but he needs to make rebounding a lot more personal than he has shown to this point.
 
Let's see if the NBA rewards him with an all-NBA defensive second team honor....

All joking aside, I agree Al needs to work on boxing out and giving better efforts when going up against quicker Cs... Pretty sad to see him get killed by Noah and Robin Lopez
 
Didn't the same site that had Millsap as the 8th worst defender have Jefferson in the 160-ish range out of 200 or so? How can two websites, trying to come up with the same result, have such completely different results.
 
green said:
Didn't the same site that had Millsap as the 8th worst defender have Jefferson in the 160-ish range out of 200 or so? How can two websites, trying to come up with the same result, have such completely different results.
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Because, like baseball, basketball has become over-run with complicated junk stats so people can sound like they know what they're talking about without actually having the attention span required to sit through a game. It's inevitable that they'll begin to contradict each other.
 
green said:
Didn't the same site that had Millsap as the 8th worst defender have Jefferson in the 160-ish range out of 200 or so? How can two websites, trying to come up with the same result, have such completely different results.
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Correct. And I think those of us who watched games would agree more with the first site. Interior defense was woeful.

Also, one post here said Big Al has the body to be a great defender. Mebbe, but if you look at his shoulders and arms, he and the weight room have only a nodding aquaintance.
 
Big Al is 6' 8.5" in his socks and even though he has a long wing span, he gives up size every night. I was actually impressed with his defense and I thought was better than Memo....which isn't saying a lot. The problem he had is that he and Millsap are undersized and teams game plans were to take it to the hoop.
 
sojodave said:
Big Al is 6' 8.5" in his socks and even though he has a long wing span, he gives up size every night. I was actually impressed with his defense and I thought was better than Memo....which isn't saying a lot. The problem he had is that he and Millsap are undersized and teams game plans were to take it to the hoop.
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Just a bone to pick in general. WHY DO PEOPLE CARE HOW TALL NBA PLAYERS ARE WITHOUT SHOES??????? They never play without shoes on. THEY ALWAYS HAVE SHOES ON!!!!
 
As Zman said, Big Al and the weight room only have a nodding acquaintance, he just forgot to take it one step further and point out, than when AL goes in to the weight room, he nods off to sleep. Face it, and I'm a huge Jefferson fan, dude is soggy, very similar to Memo. My guess is that 50% of Jazzfanz posters, in their prime, were stronger than some of these clowns.
 
I think a significant portion of Big Al's fitness flaws can be attributed to his knee. As he played on it more and more his conditioning and his rebounding did improve. He had a stretch where he was getting 10-15 rebounds a game in the 3rd quarter of the season.

If he stays in Utah and works out with Sap this offseason like he says, he will be in the best shape of his career next year.
 
Interesting article on ESPn Insider today about NBA tentpole players, guys who play both ends of the court. Evidently, Big Al's not one, coming in with a rating of 87 on offense but just 31 on defense...which is slightly better than Boozer and also Stoudemire.

I think Kicky's old post stated we could post up two paragraphs from a site...so here's the two on Big Al.

"The good thing is, at 26 years old, Jefferson is still relatively young. That said, he'll need all the time he can get to reverse the harrowing trends. Jefferson had the worst defensive on-court/off-court differential in the NBA this past season, as the Utah Jazz hemorrhaged 111.8 points per 100 possessions with him on the court and just 103 points with him sitting.

Individually, his counterpart on the opposing team has beaten up on him all season. The average player in the NBA has a 15 PER, but power forwards against Jefferson have posted a 24.4 PER. Centers against Jefferson? 16.6. All the post moves in the world won't do a thing to mitigate his matador act on the other side of the floor."
 
Al always gets tagged with the plus/minus and no doubt he deserves it to a point. But if you look at all the plus/minus stats of our guys, the bench fares much better. Even normally strong plus/minus guys like AK, Deron, and Sap fell off the mark. Part of that was our horrific starts. But I think the missing ingredient is Bell. Anybody who played most of their minutes with Bell got dragged down, and Al played nearly all his minutes with Bell. My guess is if Bell had gotten the Ninja treatment early, all the plus/minus stats would be a little better across the board.
 
Does anyone here want to see the Jazz trade Al? What is fair value for him? For example, IF Memo can play next year, is a deal based on Al for Granger realistic? What would make it good for both teams? Jazz save money the next two years, but have to take on an extra year with Granger's contract.

Starting five of Harris, Hayward, Granger, Favors and Memo doesn't sound so bad. Thoughts?
 
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