Last year is last year ...it's over and done with.Players get healthier from the seasons nicks and aches and a new season comes on.
No Jazz player has hit his prime from the core players except Ingles who's in his prime years now.
So internal growth from Gobert,Favors,Hood,Burks,Rubio,and Exum and the addition of rookie Mitchell will be the prime reason for another 50 plus win season.
The rise of this Jazz team is going to begin with Favors.A healthy Favors could put 20 ppg and get 10 rpg shooting at a 55% clip.A month over 26 yrs old .He looks thin and motivated.
Gobert is undoubtedly the leader on defense where he's much more athletic there than he is on the offensive end,Favors is a much natural scorer there.If Gobert leads Jazz in scoring the Jazz team is probably losing as much games as it's winning.
With Gobert/Favors frontcourt the Jazz are going into games to dominate defensively and control the backboards.Adding Udoh gives the Jazz a defensive presence all game under the boards.
Jazz intend to make teams that try to win games by running them by smothering them with length on the perimeter and length inside.Jazz have showed even the best teams they can control the pace in games.Keeping Favors and playing him with Gobert shows the Jazz have doubled down on THEIR WAY of winning games including the best teams.
Rubio,Hood,Exum,Burks,rookie Mitchell could become a top tier backcourt. Each has upside based on age.Rubio likely have a offense taylored to be successful for his skillz..Opening up defensive pressure to open up fastbreak opportunities.Speeding up bringing the ball upcourt opens up the offense for Exum who will need to do for Exum.Exum brings speed and he has shown he can get to the basket when he wants.Jazz know this and he will get the opportunity to use his speed to its full extent.
Hood and Burks can be like Rubio and Exum from the SG position.Hood will get 1st shot to up his game and get what Hayward got ,last shot opportunity in the offense.Burks is making noise this summer that he's playing healthy and pain free.
DMitchell will make the backcourt potentially really good if he can transistion his athletic play in SL into the regular season.Contrary to what so many think SL doesn't mean playing time for the regular season.I think his time will hinge on how strong Burks comes back.Burks starred when he was healthy compared to a rook who hasn't played a minute of real time.But we all think Mitchell is a great addition and he can make the backcourt a really strong backcourt.
Ingles completes the core ,a coach and glue guy on the court.Rubio and Ingles will make Snyders offense hum and Snyder HAS to open up offense for this young athletic team to play to their potential .I've always heard good coaches play to their teams strengths and don't make them play to what the coach ONLY knows how to play.Time to Snyder to tweak his team to play to their strengths ...Pick it up offensively and defensively Coach Snyder !
TL;DR
A fun game to play with Tleikheen is see how far into the post you can get before there is a mention of Exum.