Why the Jazz were so bad defensively?

[FalseFlagg K]

Dunno why anyone is so fussed about what we were like defensively. We weren't trying to win, it's a moot point

 

[jazznik]

Dunno why anyone is so fussed about what we were like defensively. We weren't trying to win, it's a moot point

What is interesting that throughout the season there was a lot of fussing about the offensive production of each individual player and the team as a whole. And nobody was saying "why bother talking about the lack of passing or the low FG% of this or that guy - we are not trying to win!" I wonder why.

 

[cctrackstar]

our entire team is comprised of players drafted in the mid to late first or second, with incomplete games. if you have weaknesses, your best chance to make it in the league anyway is to focus entirely on offence and hope you get noticed by someone. i used to think that good defense is just effort, but i am starting to think that it is instinctual, the deep desire to shut a guy down and break his will. that is more than just effort. if someone is focusing entirely on offence in an effort to stay in the league, they aren't going to have the time or energy to develop that instinct.

 

[HermanG]

I don't know, I think I did a pretty fair comparison after being repeatedly told that the Jazz defensive problems are mostly due to tanking and young players playing a lot of minutes. I compared the Jazz defense in the year when the Jazz were competing for most of the year and in the year when they played almost exclusively vets + Kessler (who is supposedly a good defender for a young player): the results were the same.

Instead of the full year data, you are for some reason doing selective comparisons for specific dates and against a very specific team that dramatically changed its roster at the trade deadline (i.e. no way the pre-deadline Mavs would go to the Finals). But your 2024 trade deadline stats tell the same story: the Jazz, while trying to win the games and playing their vets, were the 25th on defense. I do not have the deadline DRTG stats for other teams but I am pretty sure that by that date the teams below defensively were mostly or exclusively the desperately tanking teams like the Hornets, Wizards and Pistons. If you think that tanking/playing vets affect the defensive rating then you need to compare the non-tanking Jazz to other non-tanking vet teams, right? How many of them were worse in 2023-24?

I think that the 2 year sample shows that when the Jazz tank their defense is worse compared to other tankers, and when they compete/play vets their defense is worse than that of other teams stacked with vets and competing. When something like that happens it points to other factors affecting the team defense, regardless of the player experience or the level of tanking. I think it is fair to discuss what those factors could be because I, personally, do not know.

Just stick your data points where ever and do actual analysis for once. I can give you short and concise points that anyone who watched the actual games should know:

• "Hunger games" and how our guards performed to start the season
• Kessler injury that he tried to play through (also he had a down year altogether)
• Dunn wasnt even in the rotation until January
• Tech wasnt in the rotation to start the season, and the first time he topped 20+ minutes was 22nd of November
• Collins was so slow to learn Hardy schemes that even the FO compained about it to our beat writers
• Collins also couldnt play with Kessler out of the gate, because he was so hardwired to play like a stretch 5

Your whole "we played vets big minutes" is not even analysis. Doesnt matter who you play if your rotations are broken. Hardy was playing who he was supposed to be playing but the team just didnt function as a unit. THT was maybe our second best performing guard early season but ironically we started doing much better only after he got permanently benched. Thats because we had WAY too many guards crammed in the rotation and the best fit with almost every other guard we had was Dunn, who wasnt in the rotation because of the logjam. But THT, Keyonte, Sexton were all young and Hardy had to play them. JC also wasnt a guy who you can just easily bench even though he played like trash quite often.

 

[jazznik]

Just stick your data points where ever and do actual analysis for once.

I don't think I did any analysis at all. I simply asked the question and gave several options to facilitate the discussion. Several posters reiterated that it is mostly due to tanking and playing young players and I pointed out that the defense was bad even when the Jazz were not tanking and were playing more vets. It was actually you who went deeper and laid out other explanations and I appreciate that. Step-Back Lauri also had good points.

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[KqWIN]

If the topic is “we played too many young guys”, than showing that we actually played a lot of vets seems relevant to me. Young players are usually bad at defense and a lot of our young players are extra bad at defense. Some of the vets we played in 23/24 were also amongst the worst defenders in the league.

 

[Tremendous Upside]

Watching all those playoff games and wondering - how many of our current players can you imagine getting minutes in games like those? Be honest... 2? Do we have more than 2?

Then again, the Nuggets are giving major minutes to Peyton Watson and the rotting corpse of Russell Westbrook.

Both those dudes would fit right in here.