Tobias Harris is really the only player that satisfies most of those criteria, frankly.
--
With our roster as it currently stands, we are third in the western conference-- after Golden State and Houston. Keep in mind, we stole a game in Houston with both Rubio and Sefalosha out-- series likely at least went 6, perhaps even 7 with a fully healthy Jazz roster.
We need to understand what our strengths were, where we got exposed, and what it will take to make the next step.
Things that stood out to me from these playoffs--
i) defensively I thought we were fine against Houston, especially in the half-court. If there was games we got blown apart, it was generally ****** offence leading to Houston attacking before we could back-track. They had multiple games where they looked dreadful shooting from 3 point land. It took a playoff career-high from Chris Paul to eke out past the jazz @ houston
ii) we *could not* punish Houston for hiding small players on Rudy-- passes that would make it to him were either not on target, late, or he botched them. To me, this was the kicker-- and this is where Rubio's absence was most felt (along with Dante's later in the series). Rudy is, at times, an extremely potent offensive weapon who draws traffic, and can kick it open to the corners when he does-- unfortunately, in the series we just watched, Rudy was rendered ineffective by thr trio fo Tucker, Paul, and Capela.
iii) The presence of Favors was key to advancing past OKC-- meanwhile, both Golden State and Houston run a list of shorter stretch-4s that render Derrick's advantages fairly ineffective. Additionally, at this point Derrick Favors is not a consistent three-point threat (despite his two threes against OKC in Game 2, I believe).
iv) to go past Houston or Golden State, we need to go past the two most difficult pick-and-roll coverages arguably in the entire NBA. If we sign Jabari, we simply cannot play him in crunch-time minutes because he will be exposed. Don't you remember how teams would search out Kanter in these PnRs when they played against us? Similarly, we would seek out James Harden and Carmelo Anthony in these playoffs-- mind you, James Harden is formidable and he had Capela behind him so that's why Donovan wasn't averaging 30 through the series.
So, to me, a few questions remain--
i) if we do not retain Favors, does this cripple our switchability on defence, as well as our ability to move past teams like POR, NOL, and OKC?
ii) if we do retain Favors, does that clog the pain and render Rudy's ability to impose an offensive presence ineffective?
iii) if we pick up a stretch 4 to replace Rudy, and provide another release valve on offence, will we be able to play this player in crunch-time or will the minutes be allocated to the likes of Jae Crowder? Can we afford to pay 20mil/yr to a player who we can't play in crunch-time?
At times like these, it helps to be able to have spreadsheets and statistically analyze our players vs players around the league, and see how they best fit with us. I think not enough attention is being paid to the potential of Rubio being a third key cog in our offence, nor is the presence of Derrick Favors being recognized as a key component to our defence (Crowder can't guard the 4 30 minutes a game, 82 games a year). If Tobias Harris mocks out as a league average defender, then I think you need to really throw an unprotected first and Jones Jerebko or something. Some sort of package that still retains our top 8 players. Same holds true for Jabari-- if our analysis overwhelmingly shows confidence that he can provide league average defence, we should look into him.
