Donovan as Point Guard

[YoungJefe]

I'm on the record that IMO the biggest mistake of this team's FO and Quin made was their failure to back up Gobert when he demanded defensive accountability from his perimeter teammates and instead of their full support he got a cold shoulder and "we shouldn't air our dirty laundry" type of response. None of them have played any sort of defense since. It's all been 100% reliance on Rudy to cover for everyone else on the team defensively. It's so weird because Quin has actually done it before - he's benched players and refused to play them for not giving effort. He played freaking rookie Dante Exum 82 game only so he wouldn't have to play Trey Burke. They just completely failed to demand any sort of responsibility on one side of the court from not just Donovan, but most of the rest of perimeter defenders. You are never going to achieve anything of substance in this leage when 7 of 9 players in the playoff rotation, just refuse to even try to stay in front of their man or even make a simple rotation on the perimeter. It's just not going to happen, no matter if you have the most outstanding defender of the generation or not.

The biggest issue is we swapped out any good defenders we had for shooters

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

I'm on the record that IMO the biggest mistake of this team's FO and Quin made was their failure to back up Gobert when he demanded defensive accountability from his perimeter teammates and instead of their full support he got a cold shoulder and "we shouldn't air our dirty laundry" type of response. None of them have played any sort of defense since. It's all been 100% reliance on Rudy to cover for everyone else on the team defensively. It's so weird because Quin has actually done it before - he's benched players and refused to play them for not giving effort. He played freaking rookie Dante Exum 82 game only so he wouldn't have to play Trey Burke. They just completely failed to demand any sort of responsibility on one side of the court from not just Donovan, but most of the rest of perimeter defenders. You are never going to achieve anything of substance in this leage when 7 of 9 players in the playoff rotation, just refuse to even try to stay in front of their man or even make a simple rotation on the perimeter. It's just not going to happen, no matter if you have the most outstanding defender of the generation or not.

Because he embraced Clarkson. He did that and it opened up pandora's box.

 

[LogGrad98]

Don needs to be paired with a PG like Haliburton, Lonzo, or Murray.

If Lonzo could stay healthy he is exactly what we need next to Donovan. That is why I wanted Brogdon when we went after Conley. A big play-making PG or combo guard who can create and play off the ball when needed and plays decent defense. That would elevate us by itself. If we kept the team exactly as it is and swapped Conley for Ball it would elevate us a tier.

 

[fishonjazz]

Hard to really evaluate it objectively because he was just playing their for stretches which is much different then being the teams primary playmaker.

This.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

It's crazy to think that the Jazz were one of the worst passing teams last year, if not the worst. It was easily the worst passing team I have ever watched in my 25 years of being a Jazz fan. The recognition on passes was so slow. We were just bad at passing on every level.


View: https://twitter.com/The_BBall_Index/status/1538990076415430656


Advanced stats back it up

The scary thing: Mike Conley was our best rated passer. We all want to go all in on defense/athleticism (so do I) but it's concerning to think about how bad our passing will be unless the new coach is able to change our culture to get back to ball movement. Quin was the world's biggest preacher of ball movement though (the Hayward years and even early Donovan years were crazy high amount of passes, even though the passing talent was still low).

The crazy thing to think is how much better can Gobert be on a team that has better passing talent.

The key is really to trade Clarkson. Utah has to develop a better passing culture. Donovan can definitely be a part of that, I just don't think you can have someone like Clarkson next to Donovan or it's going to enable his hero ball habits by getting into a your turn/my turn style of play.

It’s amazing how good the offense was without the pass. Donovan has a hard time toggling between distributor and scorer. Taking away another guy that can dribble and pass is going to create some issues. If the defense improves it may cover some of that.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

If Lonzo could stay healthy he is exactly what we need next to Donovan. That is why I wanted Brogdon when we went after Conley. A big play-making PG or combo guard who can create and play off the ball when needed and plays decent defense. That would elevate us by itself. If we kept the team exactly as it is and swapped Conley for Ball it would elevate us a tier.

And Lonzo kind of needs a volume scorer creator next to him… has Lavine. I think Lonzo is only available if the Bulls don’t believe he will get healthy, but they also might think AC and Demar provide enough playmaking.

 

[YoungJefe]

It’s amazing how good the offense was without the pass. Donovan has a hard time toggling between distributor and scorer. Taking away another guy that can dribble and pass is going to create some issues. If the defense improves it may cover some of that.

#1 ORting in the NBA but #30 in passing versatility...

 

[LogGrad98]

#1 ORting in the NBA but #30 in passing versatility...

Remember passing versatility does not mean no passing was done, it just means we were limited and regimented in who passes to whom and where the passes were going. When we run the blender like we should we get multiple passes around the perimeter and a few interior passes. We get lots of them, but where they are going is limited, so the versatility ratios are low, but the passing efficiency and quantity is high. I wouldn't read too much into passing versatility.

 

[KqWIN]

I'm on the record that IMO the biggest mistake of this team's FO and Quin made was their failure to back up Gobert when he demanded defensive accountability from his perimeter teammates and instead of their full support he got a cold shoulder and "we shouldn't air our dirty laundry" type of response. None of them have played any sort of defense since. It's all been 100% reliance on Rudy to cover for everyone else on the team defensively. It's so weird because Quin has actually done it before - he's benched players and refused to play them for not giving effort. He played freaking rookie Dante Exum 82 game only so he wouldn't have to play Trey Burke. They just completely failed to demand any sort of responsibility on one side of the court from not just Donovan, but most of the rest of perimeter defenders. You are never going to achieve anything of substance in this leage when 7 of 9 players in the playoff rotation, just refuse to even try to stay in front of their man or even make a simple rotation on the perimeter. It's just not going to happen, no matter if you have the most outstanding defender of the generation or not.

Quin is a better coach for a young team, less so for vets. People criticized him for not playing "insert bench warmer", but it's a different job when you're coaching a team with 6-7+ veterans. When the Jazz were a young team, we had really good player development and brought so many players up through the system. There's a lot of reasons for the playoff issues, but one of the reasons why I think we were especially unversatile is because Quin would never challenge a vet to get out of their comfort zone. We did the same thing every time because it was what our players liked and they were used to it.

What makes the Donovan thing a real tragedy is that spending more energy on defense could have improved his offense too. Donovan is an elite offensive player, but there's question that doing "less" would help him. If he developed more of an off ball game instead of 17 dribble combo moves he would be a much more efficient offensive player with energy to spare on defense. He has terrific defensive talent that's wasted.