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Hey Big Al haters...

A player struggles then plays well. Doesn't mean he didn't struggle before or that he didn't deserve criticism for those struggles. He's been great the past 4 games and we all hope it continues. Great thread, though.
 
What I want to know is where the Greg Miller, KOC, and Jerry Sloan haters went...
 
Still think both the Jazz and Al might be better served by bringing big Al off the bench given our constant first quarter struggles. But big Al clearly has worked on his effort on rebounding and is beginning to play effectively with D-Will, and it's nice to see his improvement.
 
cjs55 said:
Still think both the Jazz and Al might be better served by bringing big Al off the bench given our constant first quarter struggles. But big Al clearly has worked on his effort on rebounding and is beginning to play effectively with D-Will, and it's nice to see his improvement.
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I'm just not too optimistic about the coaches changing the starting lineup, and Al is starting to play better on both ends--which doesn't mean that it's necessarily enough. Also, I'm not sure that Elson or Fes has played well enough to start, and Sloan definitely doesn't hold them in high regard.

What I want to see is that whoever dogs it sits. Maybe as soon as with the first offense. Even if it happens in the first minute of the game. ESPECIALLY then because the Jazz aren't likely to be unrecoverably behind early in the game. That's my biggest gripe; AJ and others have been able to go for an entire quarter or even half or more when the EFFORT hasn't been there. Forget positioning; not being in the right spot is somewhat forgivable. But if a player isn't defending or boxing out, he should sit down for a possession or more.
 
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AJ has played pretty well most of the season. The fact remains, he is STILL adjusting and learning the offense, some people on here just don't seem to understand that. They haven't even tought him everything in the playbook yet for Jazz sake! I don't understand all the hate but I guess some people just like to hear themselves complain to sound important. I'll take Jefferson any day of the week over an injury prone me-first Boozer no questions asked.
 
IGS, in general though I don't agree with many of your posts (due in part to your Fes-centric love), I keep my mouth shut because, hey, it's your opinion. But this post of yours - to me - doesn't quite hit it squarely.

I think players have to be given the chance to play through a rough patch. I think the action of being yanked after one singular albeit bad play will have some bad repercussions later. Physically it can cool them off a lot which, obviously, is bad. Psychologically it takes the routine/consistency out of their games. IMHO, they should stay in unless they are really, really dogging it out there. A missed rebound here or there is fine (i.e., let them play through it), but I will admit that continued and errant play would surely merit being yanked. An example of this would be (just an example, people...) CJ throwing up three 30-footers in a row. Or Fes picking up 2 fouls within a 90 second span. Things like that.

Consistency in the rotations, according to coaches more intelligent than I, is more valuable than a player's fear of sporadically (and in their minds, arbitrarily) being yanked.
 
chemdude1232 said:
IGS, in general though I don't agree with many of your posts (due in part to your Fes-centric love), I keep my mouth shut because, hey, it's your opinion. But this post of yours - to me - doesn't quite hit it squarely.
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Well, it's good that you respect others' opinion, but you make the common error of it being "Fes-centric love". More accurate would be "defense-centric love" and "effective-lineup-centric-love" and "coaches-enforcing-what-they-preach"-centric love.

chemdude1232 said:
I think players have to be given the chance to play through a rough patch. I think the action of being yanked after one singular albeit bad play will have some bad repercussions later. Physically it can cool them off a lot which, obviously, is bad. Psychologically it takes the routine/consistency out of their games. IMHO, they should stay in unless they are really, really dogging it out there. A missed rebound here or there is fine (i.e., let them play through it), but I will admit that continued and errant play would surely merit being yanked. An example of this would be (just an example, people...) CJ throwing up three 30-footers in a row. Or Fes picking up 2 fouls within a 90 second span. Things like that.
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OK, and therein lies the inconsistency. Most of the time, players get yanked after two fouls (even when they probably won't be needed for 30 MPG) which is sometimes due to playing too aggressively, not too lackadaisically. (Although the ideal is somewhere in the middle, aggressive defense, including fouls, has seemed to help the Jazz more than the passive, low-foul approach.)

But let's take your argument and give players two plays of dogging it instead of the first play (which is still one play longer than it should be IMHO, but we'll roll at for now). At that point, that player has potentially given up 4 points or more, and as we've seen repeatedly this season, lackadaisacal play can be contagious just like team and effort play is.

The problem with this season (and previous ones) is that the free pass of ineffective play has gone WAY beyond a play or two. In multiple games, Al Jefferson has been left in the game after repeated lapses in defense that has nothing to do with learning the system and everything to do with lazy playing. Sloan should be the very first coach to bench a player for that lack of focus. Fortunately it appears that he is starting to do better, and I'm OK with the two-lapses-and-you're out policy. But letting an unfocused player play a good part of a quarter or even a half without any repercussions hurts the team.

In the post-game today of BYU vs. Utah, Jordan Wynn said that he was sat out because he was playing poorly, and he said that it motivated him to do better when he came back in. Sure enough, the team rolled off 14 points when they were defunct for three quarters. I'm not proposing that a player who is dogging it be benched for a full quarter; just until the next whistle at minimum. The few times that Jerry did do this, after the superior hustle and RESULTS of the second string was BLATLANTLY obvious, AJ also responded. If Sloan had used this philosophy, I think that Utah would've had 2 or 3 losses at most; pretty much every game was winnable if there was better focus on lineups with more effectiveness and effort.

Consistency in the rotations, according to coaches more intelligent than I, is more valuable than a player's fear of sporadically (and in their minds, arbitrarily) being yanked.
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This is where I also heartily disagree. If players are "entitled" to a more or less fixed number of minutes no matter how well they (or the lineup) are doing is suboptimal. What's more, there would be much smoother flow in rotations if only one or two players were subbed every few minutes instead of 3 or 4 or even 5 players coming in at once, even after a quarter is over. I think that the first sub-out should be around the 6 minute mark in Q1, unless they are doing exceptionally well together, which has been the vast exception this year. Bringing in CJ (or Price or Elson or Fes, depending on whether the frontcourt or backcourt is in greater need of a change) at the 6-minute mark provides little disruption keeps a lineup substantially intact, with a majority of the players warmed up. By contrast, leaving a stagnant lineup in there for an entire quarter rarely results in an uptick in performance toward the last few minutes, especially in Q1 or Q2.
 
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