Not sure I agree with the bolded part. I think Bojan struggled to start the year but it was more about the wrist than anything. I think individually guys did better in bigger roles but the whole was better when the team was fully healthy.
I think you are right the RS won't be much better if at all... but we are way more flexible and better able to handle injury issues. We stayed fairly healthy last year until the end of the RS. We should sacrifice some games in the RS to experiment... play Gay at the 5 for 5-10 minutes a night... supplement the additional 5ish minutes with Whiteside.
The second paragraph is true as well, but my thing is I don't think "that guy" is currently available. Having Gay and Bogey allows us to move one or the other... JC is the guy I think that makes the most sense to move to improve defensively now that you have Conley under contract... Butler and Forrest likely can soak up some minutes... you have Ingles, Gay, and MAYBE Paschall that can create in the second unit... supplement with Conley and Don by staggering here and there. So we can go into the season and wait for that guy to come available (hopefully).
Swapping JC or Bogey for Smart would be helpful to balance stuff out. I can't think of a lot of other guys... maybe RoCo but I think he's a little overrated. He's disruptive but gets cooked individually... he's definitely versatile but I think unless he's a smallball 5 then he's just kinda average overall. There's just not a lot of those super defenders out there... don't think we have the right assets for Lu Dort. I kinda like KCP's defense and think he's actually a little underrated... he may become available this season if Washington flames out.
So I see the need... I don't see the obvious solution... and I'm good rolling with what we have and being opportunistic.
It's definitely the case on paper, the question is what's causing that. Mitchell, Conley, Bogey, Ingles, and Clarkson are the 5 guys who I'd consider key rotation players and scorers/ball handlers. The Jazz are 34-20 when all 5 play and 35-9 when only 4 of them play since we acquired Clarkson. There are a lot of different things that play into this. Conley stunk in 19/20 and Bogey wasn't great to start this year. In general we kinda stink to start every year. I wouldn't put all that on too many mouths to feed, but I do think some of the symptoms are real.
When everyone is healthy it's not possible for everyone to be getting their natural usage rates. You could look at that as a good thing (too much firepower is better than too little), but it hasn't necessarily lead to better or more efficient offense. In fact, there's really isn't a player with a huge jump in efficiency when everyone is healthy. The biggest jumps in efficiency have actually come when someone is out.
My feeling on this is that the offense is probably fine no matter what, but defensively there is a real drop off when guys are less involved on offense. This phenomena is as old as time and has been the case for every level of player. Whether it's the 5th man on the floor or the DPOY like Rudy, if a guy doesn't feel like he's getting involved enough on offense he's not going to play as hard on defense.
This might just be a RS conversation anyways. I don't think our failures on defense are because of a lack of effort. The biggest problem for me is the defensive principles and habits established by Quin and the next problem would be the defensive talent. I think both are big enough issues that it will be incredibly difficult to succeed defensively if either persist.
I'm not going to hate on anyone being optimistic, but I'm skeptical because otherwise I'd be putting a lot of faith in Quin to do something that he has never shown any ability or desire to do. His defense has always been the defense and I do not believe it's a coincidence that we've had back to back historic defensive failures under his guidance. Media and interviews are typically BS, but we've heard nothing to imply that he's wanting to change and more to the contrary that we were just unlucky.
The only crumb of information that indicates that we are trying to be more versatile is Rudy Gay playing 5, but to me that will be an unmitigated disaster because we still have 2-4 guys on the court who can't guard a chair. The problem with guarding 5 out was not that we couldn't matchup correctly to their size (or lack thereof), it was that we can't match up to them in individual matchups and have zero ability to play help defense and rotate outside of Gobert.
The defensive personnel issue is also tough because, like you said, I'm not sure that move is out there. I'm hoping MEM has a really hard time scoring this season with Jonas and wants to move Anderson for Bogey/Clarkson. Beyond that, I'm not seeing a ton of potential there, but we need that guy. Rudy Gay might have been good value at TPMLE, but your backup 4/5 whose 35 years and also not a defensive specialist isn't going to save you. We need a significant player at the Bogey/Clarkson level who really defends.
