Lack of star player is a problem to win it all or go very deep, not to qualify for the playoffs. Point guard first and injuries second as reasons for this comeupshortance.
I agree. The main point i was making is that those talking about our problem being that we need to upgrade booker, withey, and ingles (our 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wing) to be good team are incorrect. 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wings dont have much of an effect on how good a team is.
Check this out. The jazz 4th big is booker and 5th big is withey. Their 4th wing is ingles. Now i will compare those guys against the 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wing of the other "good" teams in the league. To make sure i didn't cherry pick i qualified "good" as the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th seeds in the west and east. (i figure the top 2 seeds in each conference are better than good and the bottom 2 seeds in each conference are worse than good. Probably being generous here since simply getting into the playoffs qualifies a team as good to a lot of people)
Atlanta hawks: 4th big is kris humphries. 5th big is mike scott. 4th wing is tim hardaway jr. Are they much better than booker, withey and ingles? I dont think so. Difference is that those guys for atlanta never play cause their team is healthy.
Miami heat: 4th big is udonis haslem. 5th big is josh mcroberts. 4th wing is justice winslow. Not much better than what we have. again, our guys played a lot more minutes cause of all our injuries.
Boston celtics: 4th big is tyler zeller. 5th big is jonas jerebko. 4th wing is james young.
OKC thunder: 4th big is nick collison. 5th big is nazr mohammed. 4th wing is kyle singler/anthony morrow
LA clippers: 4th big is cole aldrich. 5th big is non existent. they only have 4 bigs listed on their depth chart. 4th wing is jamal crawford. Crawford is shooting 40% from the field and 34% from three this year btw.
Porland Trailblazers: 4th big is noah vonleh. 5th big is cliff alexander. 4th wing is allen crabbe.
So looking at that list i cant see many guys that you could replace booker, withey, and ingles with that would suddenly make us much better. Most of the time 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wings dont really even play much and if they do play a lot (like with the jazz) then you probably wont be very good because that means your important players were hurt.
So what the difference between the jazz and those "good" teams?
#1. Point guards. Teague, dragic, isiah thomas, westbrook, cp3, lillard. Exum would have helped but not enough imo.
#2. Health.
#3. Star players. CP3, griffin, lillard, westbrook, durant, wade, bosh, thomas.
#4. experience.
all of those "good" teams have at least 3 of those 4 things and most have all 4.
The jazz have ZERO of those things on that list.
The problem with the jazz is not who their 4th and 5th bigs and wings are imo.