Originally Posted by
infection
I see it from the other way around. With Boozer we kept going to him and refused to bench him because "lol hes the cronerstone of are offense git real bro". Despite his inability to come through down the stretch, we kept feeding him. Despite that numerous times while we kept Millsap on the bench we kept watching Boozer fumble the ball, shoot jumpers, and get his ass blocked. Everyone (well, a lot of people) kept making the argument that we can't bench Boozer for Millsap because his offense was just too important.
We got bumped from the playoffs by the Lakers three years in a row in successively less games without making a single adjustment, despite even having a small amount of diversity sitting on the bench. Boozer kept getting owned by anyone on the Lakers frontline, both on offense and defense, and we never attempted anything different because apparently Boozer's offensive intangibles (which is the only thing you could argue because his offense alone wasn't getting anything accomplished) were just too important to our offensive system. Fesenko, despite having no offensive skill and was completely clueless most of the time, seemed to shake things up but we refused to play that card. Obviously, you can't bring up Fesenko without everyone getting their jockstrap in a bunch and have them respond to some charicature of your opinion as if you think Fesenko is the next Mutombo. Bottom line is that Boozer's offense was overrated, despite a large portion of the fanbase hating him, yet we kept insisting that he needed to be on the floor, needed to play in the crunch, and needed to be fed the rock.
As far as Korver, we never tried to play to that strength. He was supposed to come in and basically play the role of every other SG we've had. But, unlike every other SG we've had since Hornacek, Korver could actually shoot. Because of this, he'd actually hit his shots and so it appeared we were playing him different than we played any other idiot we'd throw out at the 2 spot. Despite Korver being one of the best shooters in the league, we never set him up. How often did we set Matt Harpring up? Also, for whatever reason it may be, everyone failed to acknowledge that he was in fact our best wing defender because he was the only person who actually played D away from the ball. He also had the ability to stay in front of his man better than any of the other wings, which really isn't saying a whole hell of a lot. We rarely had him guard the tough matchup, instead thinking Brewer was some kind of defensive stopper. Also, if you recall that San Antonio was also trying to obtain Korver at the same time we were. Had he wound up in San Antonio we'd probably all have a much different perspective on him. The Spurs, often with the Jazz's help, can make Bonner look like Memo. Imagine what Korver would have looked like. Yes, a lot of that is the other guys they have to work with, but a lot of it is also understanding players' strength and playing to it rather than trying to force some other arbitrary system on a situation that it won't work on.
Memo, I thought, was played decently, though I believe we could have been a bit more solid if we relied on him offensively more than Boozer. Him and Boozer together on defense were obviously bad. Also, in the last San Antonio series it would have been nice to see a bit more of Araujo (cue the laughs). He was the only one who did/could push Duncan out of position. But, since the status quo was "too valuable" to experiment with anything else, we sat Hoffa and let the status quo get the results it got. Now, I know everyone who got a C- or above in introductory statistics wants to rush to the "dude sample size.. i know about sample size iz iz smrt" to defend the fact that we kept playing deficient lineups when they proved to be failures.
Last draft I had expected us to pick up Kawhi Leonard when he was available come our pick. Later, I heard Phil Johnson (as much as I admire and respect him) mention that he's not the prototypical SF for the Jazz system and that he's more of a PF-esque SF rather than SG-esque SF and that the Jazz use the more traditional wing forward in their system. Now I'm not arguing drafting Leonard or not drafting Leonard (though that's who I would have taken), what I am taking issue with, however, is that there's an implication that we need to take guys who fit into the "system". Now if the system means guys who are good teammates, hard workers and are willing to pass the ball then yes, I believe always having a "system" needs to come before anything else. What this demonstrates, however, is that the system is more than just a philosophy of basketball, but rather it is a very arbitrary view of precisely how basketball needs to be arranged and that there is a set formula that you mussn't vary. Obviously Johnson likely wasn't privy to the whole situation, but the underlying feeling persists -- that is that we must fit our pieces into our schema rather than shape our schema around our pieces.
So, back to the topic, a one-dimensional three-point shooter in no way fits into our schema. They can be a three-point shooter, and that's great, but their role will be something else. Mehmet Okur has thus far been the only exception to this. So we can go ahead and get our three-point guru, but his time will always be limited by guys like Raja who are defensive stoppers, or guys like Howard who have the experience, or guys like Jefferson who are just too important to the system to take minutes from.
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