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Feeling Better About This Team

You know what would have been a brilliant adjustment tonight? Taking Mike Conley off the floor, playing Mitchell at the 1, and using Eric Paschall as a secondary initiator. Let Paschall drive in the paint and either finish or kick it out. That's how you punish a team going small. Conley wasn't doing anything anyway. The Jazz need to develop Paschall as a point-forward.

The other option, which you'll laugh at, would be to play NAW with Mitchell in a two-guard front.
 
From Andy Larsen's 'Tripple Team' article:

Why would you believe in the Jazz?

I mean, heck: from a sheer tactical standpoint, what happened to the Jazz tonight is pretty much what happened in their last matchup against the Lakers a couple of weeks ago. It’s also exactly what happened in that Game 6: The opposing team went small. Against that, the Jazz’s offense got pretty stagnant and unconfident. Like a weak fencer, they played offense with helpless jabs. The defense was again a tire fire, absolutely baffling at times.

Okay, sure, you can make all sorts of excuses. Rudy Gobert wasn’t playing at 100%. Mike Conley’s tired. Rudy Gay, the Jazz’s big offseason signing that was supposed to help with all of this, wasn’t playing.

I’m not buying it, at this point. There have been too many key failures in the last few seasons. The Jazz lost a 3-1 series lead to the Nuggets. They lost a 2-0 lead to the Clippers, and the aforementioned Game 6 happened after the opposing team lost their best player to injury. During their best regular season in decades, they went a pretty standard 14-10 against top-10 competition; this year, they’re 8-10. And that ignores losses like tonight’s, against an absolutely woeful team that has lost seven of nine and lost their second-best player to injury before halftime.

The trade deadline has come and gone, and their only acquisition was two players well out of the rotation. I have zero hope for them in the buyout market — if players didn’t come last year, when they had the literal best record in the league, why would they join the West’s No. 4 team?

In the playoffs (beyond the first round, anyway), they’re going to go up against All-Star starters; first and second team All-NBA players. The only way that the Jazz work is if they have a more team cohesion than their opponents. But when they’re this mentally weak, they have no prayer of doing anything notable in the postseason.

Their only hope is to change their mentality. Otherwise, they’re toast.
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plot twist

quin intentionally stuck with his rotation but come playoff time he will unleash the secret super power 5 that will bring us the trophy

take note NBA take note
 
This team is what it is. A first round if not second round exit. Donovan is great but he also can get extremely selfish. Imo he should be averaging 7 assist but he'd rather get his then pass. Rudy is great but for his salary he is plain out awful on offense as far as him with the ball in his hands or when a teammate attempts to put the ball in his hands. I agree with his frustrations about not getting the ball but whenever he does get his chance, he usually does something stupid with it.

Mike is Mike. He's consistently good but how much of the needle does he move? Bogey is hit or miss and is almost as bad as Rudy with the ball I'm his hands. Royce... He wouldn't be a starter or even a 20 minute guy on any other team. I hate ragging on the guy but he's just flat out terrible as far as his role on this team. Whatever role doing absolutely nothing but playing decent defense once in a great while is.

There's little to no camadare and our two all-stars and have the maturity of grade school children are massive failures as far as leadership. There is no leadership on this team whatsoever and that includes Quin who is the definition of insanity with his stubborn lineups that constantly get exposed.

I hope I'm wrong but in my 30+ years of watching sports, this current teams make-up is one of my least favorites ever. It's getting harder for me to watch.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
This and I feel we’ve taken on some panicky anxiety at the end of games or as momentum is turning. Not sure if that is a Quin thing or the players but we don’t seem to be up to the moment.
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I think it's really a result of not having any sort of counters/preparation to adjustments made by the defense. Just look at how scrambled we are on both ends. I don't think it's a result of nervousness, I just don't think we are practiced/prepared enough to deal with a simple adjustment like a trap against Mitchell. In reality, that should not work and should be solved with one timeout. But we made no adjustment and thus we couldn't handle it.

Same thing on defense. The opposing team has one threat and bad shooting around him. It should be an easy adjustment to do the exact same thing, but Quin is not willing to make a change. The Lakers stink because they don't have spacing, but against the Jazz every team has great spacing and also any 1v1 matchup they want.

Generally, I think clutch is mostly luck. You're looking a small sample of outcomes and you're bound to have high variance. But with this team, they clearly don't know what to do when the game changes. They make no adjustments themselves and have no clue what to do when the other team changes. I don't think it's nervousness, we simply do not know what to do when things go off script. That's a really poor reflection of Quin and it's been a several year issue...not something that popped up last night.
 
Jingled said:
From Andy Larsen's 'Tripple Team' article:
Click to expand...
Andy gets it. Our FO office should have seen this a couple years ago much less this trade deadline.

Conley is a good, solid player, but he doesn't move the needle in the playoffs. Nobody is scared to defend him or attack him on offense.

Rudy is a specialist who can sometimes be outcoached into damn near a liability for us. Just like Donovan, Rudy has to have dominant stretches every game even on bad nights.

Bojan is a spot up shooter and that's it. He's an average defender at best. Bojan is our 2nd best offensive player especially when Conley is nullified. That's an issue.

Royce is playing too many minutes. We need him to play at 100% effort but he can't because he's playing 15 minutes too much each night.

Donovan's defense and offense have both been great since he returned from concussion. I'm a Donovan homer, but our issue is not Donovan. Our FO has let him down.

Clarkson is who he is. Great when he's on and a massive liability when he's not.

Rest of the team is not moving us towards our title aspirations. A bunch of role players who can't be counted on regularly. Not really any specialists in that mix either which is an issue. It would be great if we had a proven elite perimeter defender even if he sucks on offense. Or a "Bojan-light" option off the bench who is a lights out shooter to stretch the floor. I guess you could say Whiteside is a rim protecting specialist, but that doesn't do much when teams go small on us.
 
Barring trades in the offseason, the team you're looking at today is the team you're getting next year.

My guess is a disappointing playoff run means Ainge will have the green light to do almost anything he wants.
 
Avery said:
Barring trades in the offseason, the team you're looking at today is the team you're getting next year.

My guess is a disappointing playoff run means Ainge will have the green light to do almost anything he wants.
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Now that my friend, is the silver lining. If we disappoint again, massive changes are coming. I don't think we will have the assets to go too big, but maybe we have some decent value with...

Bojan's expiring
Conley's "not too bad" deal which could be an expiring
Clarkson's two year affordable deal
Rudy - if Ainge wants to go that route, I think this is the summer to do it. He's still an All Star and likely a top 3 DPOY guy.

It is so incredibly important that the 4 guys above end the year on a healthy note. If a "major shakeup" is due to happen this summer, we need for everybody to have the most value as possible.
 
It doesn't even matter what the roster looks like, sans an absolute complete overhaul. This group (currently) doesn't have what it takes to win unless things go absolutely right for them.

In the regular season that's fine, they can usually use their system to rack up wins. I'm the playoffs, when the games are shorter and you can get game planned for in a series, this group will lose because they aren't clutch, they panic, and they don't really have any desire to do what it takes to win. Oh, they talk a great game about it, but that's it
 
If this team isn't meant to touch a Finals, so be it. It's not easy for a small market team to win the whole thing.

What I won't stand for is getting nothing out of our assets. If Donovan wants out, send him on his way for an expensive return. Rudy not the answer? Fine, but I want a boatload of future picks.

If you want the next generational star, my money is on Victor Wembanyama in the 2023 draft. He may just be unguardable in iso.
 
Jingled said:
He looks exhausted. He had to carry a really big load through all the covid and injuries.
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Or quin could have played JB and forrest and rested conley. We didnt win much during that time while we were relying on conley anyways.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Ferguson_Mellochill said:
I don't think it's matter of panic, or lack of toughness. It's that we have Mike, Royce and Bogey and they can't take good defenders off the dribble. It's not that they're mentally weak. They just don't have that type of game.
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Jared Butler seems like someone with the skills to take someone off the dribble


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Jingled said:
From Andy Larsen's 'Tripple Team' article:
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So my question is, since the jazz are so easy to beat why do teams allow the jazz so many wins and such a high net ranking and allow the jazz to lead the league in scoring?



Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
fishonjazz said:
Jared Butler seems like someone with the skills to take someone off the dribble


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
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Yeah maybe we help him develop that skill instead of telling him he needed to work on being a ball mover... we ain't trying to make Royce a primary ball handler... why tell JB to sit in the corner.

He gets as much separation as anyone... that can be used to create for other by starting the blender... that should have been his development focus... that and finishing a little better around the rim. His outside shot will and has started falling more.

I just love how the regular season was something that we didn't care much about and would experiment but also all the local media were like "lolz they can't play Butler... they trying to win a championship". Yes... those goals are not at odds with each other.
 
Ferguson_Mellochill said:
You know what would have been a brilliant adjustment tonight? Taking Mike Conley off the floor, playing Mitchell at the 1, and using Eric Paschall as a secondary initiator. Let Paschall drive in the paint and either finish or kick it out. That's how you punish a team going small. Conley wasn't doing anything anyway. The Jazz need to develop Paschall as a point-forward.

The other option, which you'll laugh at, would be to play NAW with Mitchell in a two-guard front.
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I love that and Quin would never.
 
LifeOnaPlate said:
That's how I feel now, sadly. I want to be proven wrong. Prove me wrong, Jazz!!! But the confidence I had last year is gone. (And I still think, if healthy last year, we had a real shot.)
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Start of this year when there really wasn't a big change in buy in or philosophy is when I wrote them off as contenders. It is a pretty big missed opportunity in my mind. We would have needed an injury but CP hardly ever holds up. Steph has issues too... there was an open door and we have a lot of good things... just seems that tying things together is an impossible task.
 
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