A more focused player development strategy

[Handlogten's Heros]

They idea is to develop end of bench guys into something useful... We've failed at that but it's not easy. Watching Norman Powell hurts... He worked out here and reportedly some jazz folks like him. I believe he was on the board when we took Hanlan.

All that said its fine and I don't think it takes up too much coaching staff time. We could have used our roster spots in a better manner, but I get what they are doing... Just think maybe we get better players or let guys loose earlier.

 

[Deleted member 848]

i dunno we could have really used someone like Norm Powell, and if those can be had in the 2nd round of every draft then best believe we need to keep upping the ante on our workouts and scouting.

Instead we wasted a pick on freaking Olivier Hanlan. Dang.

 

[Ron Mexico]

Thanks for the feedback. If you believe resources are limited, perhaps we would focus more attention on potentially elite players like Kanter and less on Chris Johnson?

This is an interesting though overall. I personally dont think the resources for developing our players are limited on our end. They are limited at the players end. I think we spend enough time developing our high draft pick and current roster players. They get a lot of personal attention every practice and all of the time they spend at our facilitates. Part of the reason for P3 is that we need others helping develop our players in different ways and through different people. Nothing P3 offers isnt something that could be done in house by the strength and conditioning staff. The resources the Jazz have available are plenty and we can use them to develop our own players as much as possible and bring in tons of other players.

Although the reason we bring in tons of players for workouts isnt limited to finding a "diamond in the rough." A lot of it has to do with building relationships with coaches on different levels, agents of various players and other relationships. I think it is a great strategy that is not going to pay off in the short run. Even players like Milsap and Mathews were luck on our behalf. We didn't know they would be anywhere near the level they were. Sometimes players develop quickly and become much better than everyone expects even people who watched them in workouts many times. If the Jazz thought Milsap. Mathews and other players like that would be any where near what they became they would have drafted them earlier and not leave it to chance for them to fall to them. The team has said the got lucky with Milsap and would have drafted him in the first round if they knew he would turn out so well or at the very least drafted him with their Dee Brown pick.

 

[silesian]

This is an interesting though overall. I personally dont think the resources for developing our players are limited on our end. They are limited at the players end. /QUOTE]

Good point. But the staffing levels and unlimited commitment of coaches to developing second tier talent is a strategy that many other teams are not employing. Which means Jazz coaches dedicate a higher % of their time on development than other teams, as a strategic choice. Every choice has an opportunity cost. What are we foregoing by doing this? Will it pay off? Time will tell.

 

[silesian]

I agree it's a little crazy to bring in as many guys as we do, but as to the roster players, I don't know how you are measuring 'attention'. If it's hours, how many hours did the Jazz spend developing Kanter relative to guys like Chris Johnson?

Probably not much is measurable given publically available data. But from what we hear in interviews and in the press, the Jazz seem to talk more about player development as a core piece of strategy. You can measure the number of players brought in for workouts, we lead the league in this regard for sure.

My broader question is around opportunity cost: "what else could we be doing to improve the team with the time (1,000s of coach-hours) and money we took to develop Chris Johnson?"

 

[orangello]

Take this however you want to but having Norman Powell on this team instead of drafting Hanlan (Powell went 4 spots after Hanlan) would have been nice.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[orangello]

i dunno we could have really used someone like Norm Powell, and if those can be had in the 2nd round of every draft then best believe we need to keep upping the ante on our workouts and scouting.

Instead we wasted a pick on freaking Olivier Hanlan. Dang.

Looks like I should have kept reading instead of posting.

Nice work Dal.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[My2Cents]

Probably not much is measurable given publically available data. But from what we hear in interviews and in the press, the Jazz seem to talk more about player development as a core piece of strategy. You can measure the number of players brought in for workouts, we lead the league in this regard for sure.

My broader question is around opportunity cost: "what else could we be doing to improve the team with the time (1,000s of coach-hours) and money we took to develop Chris Johnson?"

There's no doubt the Jazz are heavily invested in player development, but there seems to be a couple of different issues. One is the amount of time spent developing roster players and how much time is spent on a guy like Lyles vs. a player like CJ. You can't just ignore players like CJ because they're playing meaningful minutes, so everybody gets developed to some extent. But we don't really know how they're allocating resources during the season, so I'm not sure how you can say they need to retool their strategy without knowing what the strategy is. Guys like Lyles, Exum, and Gobert may already be getting a lot more individual attention that CJ gets.
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The second issue is the number of players we bring in for workouts. It may be a little over the top, but we do have two rosters to fill. The roster guys have scattered so what else could the coaches be doing in May and June if not evaluating players? We're talking about 15-18 workouts over 2 months if they bring in 6 guys at a time. I'm not sure that's too many unless the workouts start to get bunched. The big question is not the time spent, but whether we are really benefitting from bringing all these guys in. I'm not sure we are and maybe this strategy will change now that D League guys can be so easily scouted in SLC.

 

[silesian]

I swear, I'm not Dennis Lindsay.....article

Still, there has to be a balance, Lindsey said. Utah's GM wants as many workouts as possible, but also as many strategy days as possible. Those are the days with no workouts where the staff convenes and evaluates. Those days, Lindsey said, are just as important as the days with prospects in the gym shooting jumpers. Lindsey said he's given Perrin the task of striking the balance he's seeking.