Wow you are prolific, or just as bored with the offseason as I am.
Good for Memo. He's a good guy. I wish I were Memo--more than I wish that I were almost any other player on the Jazz. He has a hot wife, a cute kid, an awesome yellow Lotus car, and the adulation of the entire Ottoman Empire. But let another team (over)pay for him.
I agree with all of this, and am more than a little jealous, except the last sentence. Look, you either like Memo at $10 million or you don’t. I don’t have a problem with the extension, you, and some others, do. That’s fine, it’s just opinion. I think it was proactive and solidified the center position, you think we should have waited and would have been just as good with Fesenko and Koufos if Okur had left.
So really, Okur didn't cost $10 million per year, but rather $10 million times the luxury tax multiple. Thank you for doubling (literally) the weight of my argument.
I think he said cap, not luxury tax. There’s a difference. Although you could make a case that Okur’s contract contributed to our luxury tax issues.
I hardly think that there would have been absolutely nobody. Brad Miller--even longer in the tooth than the Turk--was available in 2010, and signed with the Rockets for less than half as much as Okur, and he still put up 13.5 and 8 per 36 (eerily similar to Okur's numbers in 2008-09) and logged a similar +/-. Furthermore, the existing backups could've logged 5 or 10 minutes each more, at similar impact as Okur, even when not accounting for injury.
Then who would you have signed? We didn’t have the cap space for Brad Miller even if you could have convinced him to choose Utah over Houston. And the existing backup was Koufos or Fesenko.
Yes, that did occur to me, but Koufos was showing otherwise before Sloan randomly shut him down, despite his work ethic, likely implying to KoKo (at least subconsciously) that effort didn't matter, and that performance didn't even matter, because Sloan was going to favor the vets, even if when the vets were sucking it up.
I don’t know the answer to this. It comes back to the larger issue of player development. I don’t spend as much time around the team as you do so I can’t really comment on how our player development differs from what other teams do. I do know that some players seem to develop just fine in Utah and others don’t. I also don’t think there are many players who leave Utah and suddenly get better. Since the constant is the Jazz system I tend to put more blame on the players work ethic, but I know there are other factors involved.
I wanted Koufos to succeed, but don’t think he will ever amount to much in the NBA. I don’t blame Sloan for this because Koufos could only manage 9 minutes a game in Minnesota and Denver. He could be a Kris Humphries type of late bloomer though so maybe the jury is still out. In any case, Sloan’s main job was to win games and make the playoffs which in turn generates revenue for the team. I think he could have done a little better job finding minutes for young players but he wasn’t perfect, and I don’t think many coaches will jeopardize a win to get developing players’ consistent time on the court unless they are contributing to wins or the games are meaningless.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, a slower, lower-producing Okur wasn't worth $10 million per, especially when MO was taking away crucial development time (at minimal net productivity advantage) from the youngins?
Maybe he’s not worth $10 million, but big guys are generally overpaid and he was coming off one of his best, if not his best, years. I guess you could assume he was inevitably going to slow down but I know the Jazz have a pretty sophisticated system for predicting player decline. They obviously felt he was worth a 2 year extension so I’m going to trust their judgment. I do think there would have been a significant difference in productivity between Okur and Koufos/Fesenko.
In 2009, I didn't think the the Jazz should re-sign Memo because he wasn't a cornerstone, he was a bad complement to Boozer, he was only a so-so complement to Millsap, and he was slowing down. And that was before his Achilles went ape****.
I respect your opinion, I just don’t agree. I do agree he is not a cornerstone but don’t think we had a better alternative. He didn’t compliment Boozer but that was irrelevant to the extension since Boozer was on his way out of town.
I am sooooo glad that you brought up Greg Ostertag, because he is Exhibit A as to why Fesenko and Koufos needed more than 5 MPG to develop (as if this were actually controversial): Ostertag--despite being undermotivated, like Fesenko--got more minutes in his first season than Fesenko did in his first three seasons. Fesenko's performance was in the neighborhood of Ostertag's.
Completely different circumstances, and Ostertag sucked his entire career. Hard to make the case that he improved substantially due to the minutes he got early in his career. He was a career 4.5 point 5.5 rebound guy. I had much higher hopes than that for Fesenko. I also think Fesenko might have seen more minutes if had been available to play on a more consistent basis. It has to be tough for a coach to constantly adjust rotations in order to find 10 minutes a game for a player who is there one night and gone the next due to gastric distress or whatever.
Karl Malone was already self motivated, and although Sloan uniquely helped Malone, that example is not particularly relevant to Fesenko and Ostertag, who were both second-rounders and who started with Sloan from the beginning.
I think all great players are self motivated. Malone’s offseason regimens were legendary, so are Kobe’s. That’s why I think it’s on the players to work hard in practice and during the offseason to make themselves better. You like to blame Sloan if a player fails, but if a player at this level has to rely on a coach for motivation then IMO he is a lost cause. And not to nitpick, but Ostertag was a first round pick.
Yes, I do, because once you give a player 10 MPG on a regular basis, then that player can start develop. This applies not only to centers but also to other positions. This applies not only to basketball but to other sports also.
Playing time is important, but I know from personal experience that player development is more a product of practice than game experience. You gain confidence in your ability in games and I think you have to reward hard work with minutes, but games are not a time to work on technique, or learn where you are supposed to be, or what you are supposed to be doing, or for conditioning. Those are things you work on off the court or field to make you more effective in games. I’m not saying playing time isn’t important, but I think in terms of player improvement, especially early in your career, what you do off the court is more important than 5-10 minutes per game. Especially when many of those minutes come in garbage time. You don’t start to develop when you are given 10 minutes a game. You start to develop by working your *** off in practice. Just my opinion.
