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Al Jefferson on Inside the NBA

chawx

chawx

Active Member
Big Al was reprezentin' the Jazz on Inside the NBA last night. He was on for about 3-4 minutes tops.

Basically it went like this, Kenny asked him why it's taking the Jazz to get down by 18 to get into the game and Al's answer was, "I don't know...we're working on it" etc.

Then they asked him what Sloan said at the half, Kevin McHale joked, "Can you repeat any of it?" and Al just basically said he got on us, told us to settle down, play our style, etc. Nothing groundbreaking.

Barkley asked him what the hardest part about going from a bad team to a winning team, and Al said basically all the new plays he had to learn and the complex offense the Jazz run.

Then McHale started to coach him about his post moves and telling him to stop fading with his shot and go up hard. Kenny was being the defender and he stepped in front of McHale the 2nd time and McHale then told Jefferson to go with the up and under if the defender cheats to the inside.

It's obvious McHale has a lot of love for Jefferson. I wonder the possibility of trying to bring McHale in ala. Hornacek when he was helping AK and others with their shot. Is McHale technically on another teams payroll? Or, since he's on Inside the NBA, is he available?

Oh, almost forgot, Barkley at the end asked how much Al's earrings cost. LOL. He didn't say, but they were pretty baller..huge yellow diamonds it looked like.

Anyway...that's it. Anyone else that saw it, feel free to add anything I missed.
 
Kevin is right though and hopefully he took something away from his 3 minute lecture. I realy dont think Kevin needs to justify that trade at all. The T wolves were at a crossroads and they recieved picks, cash and what at the time looked like a great core of young players. Al Jefferson has turned into a very good player. We have not even seen near his best yet.
 
BOX said:
Kevin is right though and hopefully he took something away from his 3 minute lecture. I realy dont think Kevin needs to justify that trade at all. The T wolves were at a crossroads and they recieved picks, cash and what at the time looked like a great core of young players. Al Jefferson has turned into a very good player. We have not even seen near his best yet.
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You guys remind me of Tom Nissalke. If Mchale were with the team at some point during the season last year, then I could understand, but he hasn't been with the TWolves for the past few years. Rambis has been the coach and the 'tard David Kahn has been the GM.
 
McHale looks nice there and the guy needs credit for drafting KG and doing some nice things in Minny, but the MAJORITY of his time in Minny was spent driving that team into the ground. F McHale. Seems nice there, though.
 
Purch said:
https://www.nba.com/insidethenba/
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Now that's some good stuff by Kevin McHale. The left-shoulder jump hook is definitely Al's go-to move, but he has to be hitting it consistently to set up his counter moves (up-and-under and baseline spin). Love to see Kevin coaching him up...again Jazz coaches are still getting a feel for Al's game and moves so they don't know all the intricacies of his moves like McHale does.

One other thing I noticed from the Magic game was in the previous 3-games where Al was struggling with his shooting, when he would shoot that jump-hook, it was basically a push-shot because he wasn't following through, just lobbing it towards the rim. Against the Magic, he had a great follow-through, almost like a one-hand jumper and was extremely accurate on that shot.
 
The way he went at D12 in crunch time with confidence was definitely encouraging. Hopefully, he can continue to build off of that.
 
As has been mentioned before, in his day McHale had the most unstoppable moves in the NBA, and he tutored Big Al for years, which definitely shows in Al's game. When McHale got the ball in the post, he was very patient. If he didn't have an immediate shot, he went to work, taking his time. He would execute several moves without ever takin a shot, just ball fakes. After a little of that, his defender was so off balance/out of position that he could virtually score at will.

Although his teammates (like Ainge) called him "the black hole" (because the ball never came back out once McHale got his mitts on it), McHale was wildly successful. Once he got the ball down low, he had one thing in mind: to score, even if it took some time. He was very methodical.

This is what he taught Al to do, over and over and over. Big Al has been habituated to that mentality, and I think it's a big reason he might have more trouble adjusting to the Jazz's style than the average bear.
 
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