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An explanation of why, mathematically, this has been the most frustration Jazz season of all time.

And, for the record, I supported signing Bazemore back before he went to ATL. So, yeah, I've been really inconsistent on that one.
 
NAOS said:
A very vocal jazzfanzer tried to bury me for saying we need a Bulldog out on the perimeter. In other words, for saying we need a lockdown defensive guru who could disrupt offenses in late-game situations. I think the case is pretty well closed: we don't have a perimeter guy who can check the most talented perimeter playmakers/scorers when we get into to grind-it-out situations.

Exum may eventually become that guy. He obviously can defend any "guard". But he could even defend "wings" if he added more strength.

But we can't wait on Exum. We need a Bulldog now, just like we needed one last October.

It's obviously time for Lindsey to get busy.
Click to expand...


- You wanted to send max-contracts to wing players, bring Hood off the bench, and play Alec at pg for 20mpg. Did the triple wing lineup work well? I'd love to know the record of this team this season for every game that Alec hit the 20 minute mark. Most of us were fine with him playing there for up to 10 minutes a game, but any more would negate his effectiveness in that lineup in stints.
- I'd also love to see the list of players that we mentioned for max contracts (Harris, Carroll, Middleton, Green, who else am I missing?) who had better seasons than Rodney Hood. By my count, just Kris. Bazemore wasn't a FA last offseason so he never entered the conversations at large. The crux of the cake-baking argument was wanting to evaluate the talent that we had & forsaking one more season towards development before we go all in for 2016-2017. Isn't it nice that we now know that we don't need to offer a ridiculous contract to a stretch 4 given Lyles' production? Isn't it nice knowing we don't need another backup 7footer for Rudy now that we saw Withey play in stints? We managed to figure out that Burke provides nothing to this team. Neto has spurts. We got an okay backup in Mack at the deadline. Hood has shown starting level production. Burks continues to be a question mark given his injury.
- Statistically, Locke said the Jazz guard SFs better than any other team in the league. How will a 'bulldog' help us in this regard? Hayward is really, really ****ing good. Let's use our finances on shooting, PGs, and spacing (if Exum isn't enough). Our only 'knockdown' shooter is Joe Trebuchet Ingles. Offense is a much, much bigger problem than defense with this team.


And yes-- Dennis has now had a year to evaluate his talent with emerged roles. Dennis needs to drop cash and bolster this team-- Hayward will jettison otherwise.
 
DownUnder said:
Hayward has been a very very good wing defender all year. And you don't think Exum will have added strength in all this time off ? He'll make an enormous difference, and i hope Hood improves defensively as well. Burks i have doubts he'll ever be a good defender
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****ing bizarre that we're worried about defense when we look at our stats and we're then reminded of the amount of games that 3 VERY good defenders (Dante, Favors, Gobert) missed. I'm more worried about that annoyingly receptive handoff action on offense where Rudy nearly turns over the ball like 70% of the time.
 
dalamon said:
- You wanted to send max-contracts to wing players, bring Hood off the bench, and play Alec at pg for 20mpg. Did the triple wing lineup work well? I'd love to know the record of this team this season for every game that Alec hit the 20 minute mark. Most of us were fine with him playing there for up to 10 minutes a game, but any more would negate his effectiveness in that lineup in stints.
- I'd also love to see the list of players that we mentioned for max contracts (Harris, Carroll, Middleton, Green, who else am I missing?) who had better seasons than Rodney Hood. Bazemore wasn't a FA last offseason so he never entered the conversations at large. The crux of the cake-baking argument was wanting to evaluate the talent that we had & forsaking one more season towards development before we go all in for 2016-2017. Isn't it nice that we now know that we don't need to offer a ridiculous contract to a stretch 4 given Lyles' production? Isn't it nice knowing we don't need another backup 7footer for Rudy now that we saw Withey play in stints? We managed to figure out that Burke provides nothing to this team. Neto has spurts. We got an okay backup in Mack at the deadline. Hood has shown starting level production. Burks continues to be a question mark given his injury.
- Statistically, Locke said the Jazz guard SFs better than any other team in the league. How will a 'bulldog' help us in this regard? Hayward is really, really ****ing good. Let's use our finances on shooting, PGs, and spacing (if Exum isn't enough). Our only 'knockdown' shooter is Joe Trebuchet Ingles. Offense is a much, much bigger problem than defense with this team.


And yes-- Dennis has now had a year to evaluate his talent with emerged roles. Dennis needs to drop cash and bolster this team-- Hayward will jettison otherwise.
Click to expand...

I didn't even make it past the first line because of the blatant errors.
 
dalamon said:
- You wanted to send max-contracts to wing players, bring Hood off the bench, and play Alec at pg for 20mpg. Did the triple wing lineup work well? I'd love to know the record of this team this season for every game that Alec hit the 20 minute mark. Most of us were fine with him playing there for up to 10 minutes a game, but any more would negate his effectiveness in that lineup in stints.
- I'd also love to see the list of players that we mentioned for max contracts (Harris, Carroll, Middleton, Green, who else am I missing?) who had better seasons than Rodney Hood. By my count, just Kris. Bazemore wasn't a FA last offseason so he never entered the conversations at large. The crux of the cake-baking argument was wanting to evaluate the talent that we had & forsaking one more season towards development before we go all in for 2016-2017. Isn't it nice that we now know that we don't need to offer a ridiculous contract to a stretch 4 given Lyles' production? Isn't it nice knowing we don't need another backup 7footer for Rudy now that we saw Withey play in stints? We managed to figure out that Burke provides nothing to this team. Neto has spurts. We got an okay backup in Mack at the deadline. Hood has shown starting level production. Burks continues to be a question mark given his injury.
- Statistically, Locke said the Jazz guard SFs better than any other team in the league. How will a 'bulldog' help us in this regard? Hayward is really, really ****ing good. Let's use our finances on shooting, PGs, and spacing (if Exum isn't enough). Our only 'knockdown' shooter is Joe Trebuchet Ingles. Offense is a much, much bigger problem than defense with this team.


And yes-- Dennis has now had a year to evaluate his talent with emerged roles. Dennis needs to drop cash and bolster this team-- Hayward will jettison otherwise.
Click to expand...

lol. I just finished. lmao.
 
NAOS said:
Here's a quick sketch of how the minutes might be distributed, on average.

Exum (25) / Burks (20)
Carroll (30) / Burks (10) / Hood (8)
Hayward (30) / Hood (18)
Favors (25) / Booker (20) / Lyles (3, and increasing)
Gobert (32) / Favors (7) / Pleiss (9)
Click to expand...


.
 
dalamon said:
****ing bizarre that we're worried about defense when we look at our stats and we're then reminded of the amount of games that 3 VERY good defenders (Dante, Favors, Gobert) missed. I'm more worried about that annoyingly receptive handoff action on offense where Rudy nearly turns over the ball like 70% of the time.
Click to expand...
Solid post
 
KD's Framily said:
This is kind of a long one. If you just want the tldr version, scroll to the bottom.

The Simple Rating System (SRS) is a number that is calculated by taking a team's average point margin and adjusting it up or down depending on the strength of their opponents. An above average team's SRS will be positive - a below average team's SRS would be negative. As a result, if you add up every team's SRS in the NBA, you'd wind up with 0. An exactly average team's SRS would be exactly 0.

Historically, SRS has been a more accurate indicator of playoff success than regular season record.

Despite all the injuries, Utah's SRS this season was 2.03 - good for 10th in the NBA and 5th in the Western Conference. This SRS is typical of a team that wins around 47 games. I only went back to the 1999-2000 season, but I did not find a single team with an SRS above 2.00 that did not finish with a winning record. We will be the first of this millennium, and maybe ever.

So why does SRS say, even factoring in all the injuries, that we are a top 10 team when we couldn't even finish with a winning record? The obvious explanation is that we lost an extraordinary amount of close games. But I want to dig deeper. Look below:

@ DET, up by 1 with 23 seconds left
@ CLE, up by 9 with 7 minutes left
vs GSW, up by 2 with 2 minutes left
@ OKC, up by 9 with 7 minutes left
vs NO, up 6 going into the 4th
vs LAC, up 3 with 3 minutes left
vs HOU, up 8 going into the 4th
@ CHA, up 4 with 3 minutes left
@ NYK, up 10 early in the 4th
@ NO, up 8 with 11 minutes left
@ POR, up 13 early in the 3rd, up 2 with 1:30 left
@ BOS, up 13 in the 2nd, up 2 with 30 seconds left
@ MEM, up 14 early, up 5 going into the 4th
vs GSW, up 8 with 7 minutes left, up 3 with 24 seconds left
vs SAS, up 1 with 1 minute left
vs LAC, up 7 with 2:30 left, up 4 with 46 seconds left

These account for about 40% of our losses. Granted, I included some results in there that you might've expected even while we had the lead (such as the DET one, the GSW ones, the SAS one, etc...). Also, you'd expect a team to blow late leads here and there throughout the season. Individually, none of these are that surprising.

The point I want to illustrate is, in aggregate, we had a HUGE volume of losses of this nature - where we had a solid 4th quarter lead or a lead very late. stats.nba.com has clutch stats for every team, which shows, among other things, each team's offensive rating and defensive rating (points scored and allowed per 100 possessions, respectively), in situations where the game was within 5 points with 5 or fewer minutes remaining, Utah's defensive rating was a staggeringly awful 120.6 - good for 27th in the NBA. Their offensive efficiency was 104.8, which was 19th in the NBA.

A note - you'd expect offensive and defensive efficiency ratings to both increase in the clutch because of all the intentional fouling going on. Throughout the entire season, our offensive rating was 15th in the NBA (103.2), and our defensive rating was 7th in the NBA (101.5). So while our offense in the clutch was slightly worse than it was overall (15th to 19th), our defense in the clutch completely dropped off a cliff (7th to 27th).

So... what the hell? Why did our defense suck so bad in the clutch compared to the rest of the game? One of the biggest reasons was our rebounding. Overall, we collected 77.7% of available defensive rebounds (7th in the NBA). In the clutch, that number nosedives to only 70.4% (28th in the NBA). For whatever reason, our guys could not collect a damn rebound when games were close late. Also, and this is more subjective, but I thought that players consistently got out of character on defense late in close games throughout the season. We got less disciplined, over-rotated, over-helped, and, in a nutshell, panicked. That probably also contributed to not being in position to gather key rebounds.

Two conclusions here (or the tldr summary):

1: This was easily the most frustrating season in Jazz history. We had a large volume of close losses where we led late. However, it is extremely encouraging that, even with the amount of injuries we had and our youth, SRS still has us as a top 10 team.

2: Our defense was terrific overall, but it needs to be way better in close games. Specifically, it needs to be just as disciplined in the clutch as it is through the rest of the game, and rebounding has GOT to be an emphasis at the end of close games. Failure to defend and rebound in close games cost us a lot of games, and there's no reason that shouldn't be fixable.
Click to expand...
Great post. However, not the most frustrating season, but I don't want to derail the thread.

The Dallas game was a microcosm of the season, a lack of experience and being the 4th youngest team in the NBA. I knew things would be difficult once Exum got hurt. Time after time we blew leads late and had miss steps and got in our own way, and it probably didn't help that the Jazz finished so strong last year teams adjusted to Gobert and probably took the young up and coming Jazz more seriously, but from time to time, just like Lyles season we saw glimpses of how good this team could be, both GSW games though losses, how many teams can say they took this historically great team to the brink of an L twice the Dalas game before the allstar break. The Cle game on national tv, the Jazz pretty much controlled the game. And many others.

This year had many frustrations, the injuries blown calls by refs, and missed opportunities. For me all of this fails in comparison to actually see the Jazz play meaningful games, and have many successes despite everything against us. For the first time in what seems like ages, we can finally see the light at the end of a tunnel. The one thing that kept us from beating the mavs was a more experienced coach and players. They made plays, we played to not screw it up, and played tight. So many countless times the Jazz passed up opportunities to shoot open shots and hesitant to make plays at certain times.

This post and thread has strengthened my faith in this team, and where they are going, and believe we will compete in another finals in the future.

Bottom line. We won't always be the fourth youngest team in the league. We won't always lose the close games won't always get screwed by blown late calls and injuries won't always be this bad. Overall I enjoyed the season, and the growth and improvements this team made as the season went on.

The season was a mother effing blast I can't remember the last time that I looked forward to each and every last game on the schedule, and next year will be even better and only keep getting better over the next few years. At the end of the day, at least the Jazz aren't the rox and we aren't clutchfans. We are trending up, and even if they make the playoffs and we don't they are trending down.
 
NAOS said:
There's a ****ing history to those ideas, brough, which your posts did not cover. Until you represent the history, then, Yes, blatant errors are present.
Click to expand...

just take the L bro.
 
kidding aside-- i'll be bummed if NAOS is right about Dennis being a dork about Burks being our "Big FA acquisition" for the 2nd season in a row.
 
As if the cakk bakkers didn't need any more egg on their faces, I'm being harassed by one now, again -- asking me to justify my position. It should be the other way around.

Portland is the anti-cakk. How do you guys like their season?
 
NAOS said:
As if the cakk bakkers didn't need any more egg on their faces, I'm being harassed by one now, again -- asking me to justify my position. It should be the other way around.

Portland is the anti-cakk. How do you guys like their season?
Click to expand...

They won't contend for a title unless they find a couple gems late in the draft
 
Thee jazz fan said:
Great post. However, not the most frustrating season, but I don't want to derail the thread.

The Dallas game was a microcosm of the season, a lack of experience and being the 4th youngest team in the NBA. I knew things would be difficult once Exum got hurt. Time after time we blew leads late and had miss steps and got in our own way, and it probably didn't help that the Jazz finished so strong last year teams adjusted to Gobert and probably took the young up and coming Jazz more seriously, but from time to time, just like Lyles season we saw glimpses of how good this team could be, both GSW games though losses, how many teams can say they took this historically great team to the brink of an L twice the Dalas game before the allstar break. The Cle game on national tv, the Jazz pretty much controlled the game. And many others.

This year had many frustrations, the injuries blown calls by refs, and missed opportunities. For me all of this fails in comparison to actually see the Jazz play meaningful games, and have many successes despite everything against us. For the first time in what seems like ages, we can finally see the light at the end of a tunnel. The one thing that kept us from beating the mavs was a more experienced coach and players. They made plays, we played to not screw it up, and played tight. So many countless times the Jazz passed up opportunities to shoot open shots and hesitant to make plays at certain times.

This post and thread has strengthened my faith in this team, and where they are going, and believe we will compete in another finals in the future.

Bottom line. We won't always be the fourth youngest team in the league. We won't always lose the close games won't always get screwed by blown late calls and injuries won't always be this bad. Overall I enjoyed the season, and the growth and improvements this team made as the season went on.

The season was a mother effing blast I can't remember the last time that I looked forward to each and every last game on the schedule, and next year will be even better and only keep getting better over the next few years. At the end of the day, at least the Jazz aren't the rox and we aren't clutchfans. We are trending up, and even if they make the playoffs and we don't they are trending down.
Click to expand...

That's a great perspective.

I probably ought to have come up with a different title. It wasn't frustrating in a "Oh my God we suck" way, but more of a "This team is so much better than their record indicates" way. And we're still so young!
 
KD's Framily said:
This is kind of a long one. If you just want the tldr version, scroll to the bottom.

The Simple Rating System (SRS) is a number that is calculated by taking a team's average point margin and adjusting it up or down depending on the strength of their opponents. An above average team's SRS will be positive - a below average team's SRS would be negative. As a result, if you add up every team's SRS in the NBA, you'd wind up with 0. An exactly average team's SRS would be exactly 0.

Historically, SRS has been a more accurate indicator of playoff success than regular season record.

Despite all the injuries, Utah's SRS this season was 2.03 - good for 10th in the NBA and 5th in the Western Conference. This SRS is typical of a team that wins around 47 games. I only went back to the 1999-2000 season, but I did not find a single team with an SRS above 2.00 that did not finish with a winning record. We will be the first of this millennium, and maybe ever.

So why does SRS say, even factoring in all the injuries, that we are a top 10 team when we couldn't even finish with a winning record? The obvious explanation is that we lost an extraordinary amount of close games. But I want to dig deeper. Look below:

@ DET, up by 1 with 23 seconds left
@ CLE, up by 9 with 7 minutes left
vs GSW, up by 2 with 2 minutes left
@ OKC, up by 9 with 7 minutes left
vs NO, up 6 going into the 4th
vs LAC, up 3 with 3 minutes left
vs HOU, up 8 going into the 4th
@ CHA, up 4 with 3 minutes left
@ NYK, up 10 early in the 4th
@ NO, up 8 with 11 minutes left
@ POR, up 13 early in the 3rd, up 2 with 1:30 left
@ BOS, up 13 in the 2nd, up 2 with 30 seconds left
@ MEM, up 14 early, up 5 going into the 4th
vs GSW, up 8 with 7 minutes left, up 3 with 24 seconds left
vs SAS, up 1 with 1 minute left
vs LAC, up 7 with 2:30 left, up 4 with 46 seconds left

These account for about 40% of our losses. Granted, I included some results in there that you might've expected even while we had the lead (such as the DET one, the GSW ones, the SAS one, etc...). Also, you'd expect a team to blow late leads here and there throughout the season. Individually, none of these are that surprising.

The point I want to illustrate is, in aggregate, we had a HUGE volume of losses of this nature - where we had a solid 4th quarter lead or a lead very late. stats.nba.com has clutch stats for every team, which shows, among other things, each team's offensive rating and defensive rating (points scored and allowed per 100 possessions, respectively), in situations where the game was within 5 points with 5 or fewer minutes remaining, Utah's defensive rating was a staggeringly awful 120.6 - good for 27th in the NBA. Their offensive efficiency was 104.8, which was 19th in the NBA.

A note - you'd expect offensive and defensive efficiency ratings to both increase in the clutch because of all the intentional fouling going on. Throughout the entire season, our offensive rating was 15th in the NBA (103.2), and our defensive rating was 7th in the NBA (101.5). So while our offense in the clutch was slightly worse than it was overall (15th to 19th), our defense in the clutch completely dropped off a cliff (7th to 27th).

So... what the hell? Why did our defense suck so bad in the clutch compared to the rest of the game? One of the biggest reasons was our rebounding. Overall, we collected 77.7% of available defensive rebounds (7th in the NBA). In the clutch, that number nosedives to only 70.4% (28th in the NBA). For whatever reason, our guys could not collect a damn rebound when games were close late. Also, and this is more subjective, but I thought that players consistently got out of character on defense late in close games throughout the season. We got less disciplined, over-rotated, over-helped, and, in a nutshell, panicked. That probably also contributed to not being in position to gather key rebounds.

Two conclusions here (or the tldr summary):

1: This was easily the most frustrating season in Jazz history. We had a large volume of close losses where we led late. However, it is extremely encouraging that, even with the amount of injuries we had and our youth, SRS still has us as a top 10 team.

2: Our defense was terrific overall, but it needs to be way better in close games. Specifically, it needs to be just as disciplined in the clutch as it is through the rest of the game, and rebounding has GOT to be an emphasis at the end of close games. Failure to defend and rebound in close games cost us a lot of games, and there's no reason that shouldn't be fixable.
Click to expand...


Thanks for this post. Tier 1 thread. Great job.



Sent from my iPhone using JazzFanz mobile app
 
we need a closer... a guy who can just score when we need a basket. I love hood and hayward, but.... :(


Sent from my iPhone using JazzFanz mobile app
 
dong2ha said:
we need a closer... a guy who can just score when we need a basket. I love hood and hayward, but.... :(


Sent from my iPhone using JazzFanz mobile app
Click to expand...

*These are last minutes clutch stats too, so the most clutch of clutch time*

You know Hayward is one of the best clutch shooters in the NBA? He is tied for the 2nd most FGM in the last minute of a game within 5 points. Only Durant and Lebron have more (and it's only 1 more FG). You know what else? Hayward actually shoots a much better % on those shots than either of those two guys. Hayward shoots 56% on these shots, Lebron shoots 46% and KD shoots 40%.

Hayward shoots 56 ****ing percent. The only other players who shoot above 50% (who are in the top 40 in attempts) are Isiah Thomas (52%) and Dirk Nowitzki (50%).

So we really need that guy who can hit a big clutch shot. GUESS WHAT IDIOTS? WE HAVE THAT PLAYER!

It's ****ing comical how many people on this board say "Damn, game is on the line in the final minutes, I really want Hood to take teh shot, not Hayward". Guess what Hood shot in the final minutes of a close game? 26%

It's pathetic how blind some Jazz fans are to how good Hayward is and how much he carried the team yet again. We need a quick penetrator and playmaking PG who can help take ball-handling pressure off him so he can continue to hit these insanely clutch shots and get the hard earned buckets in clutch time that he gets at the highest rate in the ****ing NBA.

This myth that we need a closer needs to ****ing end. It's so uninformed and foolish.

*Further stats*

Hayward went to the line 50 times in the clutch, good for 15th most attempts. He made 40 of these attempts for 80% (also debunks the myth that Hayward becomes a markedly worse FT shooter in the clutch as 80% is right in line with his season averages).

https://www.nbaminer.com/clutch-time-stats/
 
I'd love to see what Hayward can do in an offense with actual spacing and solid guard play. I hope that happens with the Jazz.
 
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