How are we going to score without Al?

[Brown Notes]

a actual offense and keeping evryone involved renders big al useless as a dominant volume scorer.
those things cannot co exist.
if al does not get the ball because of ball movement. he wont score much.
and still will suck on defense as a center.

lack of defense from a point guard is acceptable but from a 30+ minutes a night starting center it is NOT.

he needs to go for that reason alone.

his passing might improve.
but his lack of trying on defense. and inabilty to defend won't chance

Al is not incapable of defending, he is susceptible to being fatigued and also cannot be exposed very far from the basket. Al rotates very well, just not very often. That has to improve and while it has come from a very low point he's clearly improved. As has been beaten to death it's ridiculous to expect any center to guard a pg out past the foul line. Kanter got absolutely smoked at least once tonight in the exact same situation Al was in the other day.

You play your players to their strengths and try to hide their weaknesses. Very few players are great on both sides of the ball. Get your head on straight. Al contributes by putting so much pressure on a defense. They have to deny him the ball, double him or send somebody backside to try for a steal. Now against guys like all-world post defense Duncan it doesn't help much but then again this is not a HOF player we are talking about here.

Al is an offensive focus. You preach that everything would be peachy without an offensive focus but look around the league at the teams without one. They have no chance.

[Weezur]

Maybe show a trend against teams that play defense. Just a thought. GLHF.

As much as I'm not an Al fan and as much as I think offense and defense would improve without him....I still have to agree with this.
Watching Toronto play defense is excruciating painful. I mean tinsley got a wide open layup. Tinsley even hesitated for like a second and couldn't even believe himself that he was so wide open. Without even looking at defensive ratings, I do think Toronto is one of the worst teams I"ve seen defensively.

[Broncster]

So Jefferson = Black hole and Kanter equals great ball movement?

This game had nothing to do with Jefferson being out of the game. Toronto is a bad team.

[illyasova]

The jazz basketball can be identified with physical and dominant front court, hard screens, cutting players, motion offense, unselfish players who know how to share the ball and if necessary hard fouls under the rim so without Al, all these things happened so flow of the offense was much quicker and the ball movement from side to side was better so lots of 3 point shots made. Of course it's about Craptors defense and frontcourt too but still in a long period, i prefer watching Al-less team fighting till the end, struggling on the offensive side but improving overall cause it's the true thing we gotta do, earlier it's better.

[DutchJazzer]

Would love to see this team w/out Big Al playing against teams that are actually not 4/16.



yes. Big Al is a nice enough guy, but OMG, our team is so boring to watch with him on the floor. I think most Jazz fans are frothing at the mouth to see what we saw tonight. They want the young guys, Favors/Kanter playing and they want to see crisp passing with great defense (obviously the Raptors are 4/16 so it was easy tonight). I would love to see an AJ-less team playing against teams like the Thunder, Memphis, Spurs, etc.

One thing about AJ is down the stretch he is pretty clutch (Sap is too, or at least has been) and you can always count on a bucket when one is needed, but the offense generally breaks down because of him, so it's dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.

Last year we saw them vs a very good lakrs team in LA. Annd for the first time in a gazzilion years jazz beat th lakers in LA

[DutchJazzer]

So Jefferson = Black hole and Kanter equals great ball movement?

This game had nothing to do with Jefferson being out of the game. Toronto is a bad team.

But we still needed a miracle 3 and 3 overtimes to beat them

[GVC]

Would love to see this team w/out Big Al playing against teams that are actually not 4/16.

Saw that 5 times last season. Jazz were 4-1 in those games.

[One Brow]

We need Favors my friend, but not Big Al, i know it is sad but true story. Only thing we need from Big Al is getting 15 million salary cap room.

Way to miss the point. Any evidence from this game that we don't need jefferson is similar evidence against Favors. However, cognitive biases tend to run pro-Favors and anti-Jefferson, so people are interpreting the game in a manner to reinforce those biases.

This is one game. The Ewing theory is in effect.

[zman1527]

Way to miss the point. Any evidence from this game that we don't need jefferson is similar evidence against Favors.

No, no, no, and no. Favors plays defense, a critical need in your bigs, especially you C. Al doesn't. Also, favors is not the black hole. The offense does not stagnate like with BA.

[LunaticWolf]

No, no, no, and no. Favors plays defense, a critical need in your bigs, especially you C. Al doesn't. Also, favors is not the black hole. The offense does not stagnate like with BA.

Actually, you could argue that the offense does stagnate with Favors, as his offensive numbers are pretty abysmal.

[Thee jazz fan]

I lolled when one of the anouncers saying something they will miss big al, big al having paint precense, so our interiour d would be lacking

If some announcers thinks this is it possible some gm's think this?

[franklin]

Kanter went 18 points on 16 shots with only 8 rebounds in 35 minutes and ZERO assists.

Jazz shot better from 3 than they did overall.

Millsap had a pretty nice game. Too bad another couple free throws didn't fall to cap it off.

[NAOS]

In his very first NBA start, Kanter went 18 points on 16 shots with 8 rebounds in 35 minutes and no assists.

Thanks for putting things into context for us.

[fishonjazz]

It was a very timely win, fun and great to watch. Not an indictment of anybody though. Just another thought, where's the thread congratulating Corbs on winning huge without 2 key players? It cannot exist on JF.

So, if part of enjoying the win is pushing an agenda, hey have a great time. If not, it can be just as fun.

Once again corbin is forced to do what many of us think is best for the team due to injury.... He didn't choose to play this style of ball and these lineups, it was forced upon him due to injury.

Remember last year when burks never played and then at the end of the season bell, miles, and howard were all hurt so he was FORCED to play burks... Then we played our best basketball of the year and won like 9 out of our last 10 to make the playoffs.

Corbin does the correct thing best when he is forced to due to injury.

[jope]

The point here is not whether we are better off with out Al or not. The point is that we have plenty of people capable of scoring with equal or better efficiency than Al. The majority of media reps feel that we wouldn't be able to score without big Al. That is simply false