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How bad/good is Cody Williams?

I'm excited to see the what Cody and Ace can do defensively. We haven't had that type of length defensively since probably AK and Brewer but they were kind offset by Boozer and Okur. Add in a healthy Hendricks and Kessler and you may have the makings of a damn good defense. Plenty of length to hopefully offset Key defensively or ideally it forces him to take ownership on that end of the court. He has the physical tools to be decent on that end of the court but he has been surrounded by terrible perimeter defenders since he was drafted so it may have led to a mindset of not caring that much. It seems like guys try harder on that end of the court when other guys are putting in the work as well.
 
I've actually caught a bit of his play during summer league and I filmed my reaction

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He played a few minutes at the 5.....uh...what? How does that work?!
I’m assuming it was just when he got switched guarding the center. Probably not an intentional choice. I did notice it happen a couple of times while I was watching the game. Their defense was a little odd at times.
 
Look, I’m happy that Cody’s shown some improvement and I’m still hopeful that he’s going to pan out - with that said, I just wonder how things would look right now if this team had Ace Bailey, Matas Buzelis (instead of Cody) and GG Jackson (instead of Sensabaugh).

Collier/WCJ
Bailey/Keyonte
Buzelis/GG
Markkanen/Hendricks
Kessler/Filipowski

That’s a LONG, athletic team.
 
Look, I’m happy that Cody’s shown some improvement and I’m still hopeful that he’s going to pan out - with that said, I just wonder how things would look right now if this team had Ace Bailey, Matas Buzelis (instead of Cody) and GG Jackson (instead of Sensabaugh).

Collier/WCJ
Bailey/Keyonte
Buzelis/GG
Markkanen/Hendricks
Kessler/Filipowski

That’s a LONG, athletic team.
Flip would still get torched on D as a backup 5.
 
It’s SL and a tiny sample size so it doesn’t really mean jack but Cody is shooting 43/31/100 in the three games thus far.

That’s light years better than the 33/26/73 last regular season.
 
I'm excited to see the what Cody and Ace can do defensively. We haven't had that type of length defensively since probably AK and Brewer but they were kind offset by Boozer and Okur. Add in a healthy Hendricks and Kessler and you may have the makings of a damn good defense. Plenty of length to hopefully offset Key defensively or ideally it forces him to take ownership on that end of the court. He has the physical tools to be decent on that end of the court but he has been surrounded by terrible perimeter defenders since he was drafted so it may have led to a mindset of not caring that much. It seems like guys try harder on that end of the court when other guys are putting in the work as well.
I've been saying this a few too many times, but the Jazz's defense could take a substantial nonlinear jump. Good systems with the right minor additions can do that. It's not implausible to go from 28th or 29th to above league average.

Now that they've traded away most of the vets, the defense is clearly the biggest potential risk to the tank. They have to make sure that Ace, Hendricks, and Williams get a lot of shots up this year. And, for the love of Jebus, can we get more 3s from Kessler? At least for next season? Ensure the tank in these ways, pls.
 
Cody was one of the absolute worst defenders in the league last year and was terrible defensively in college as well. The defensive improvement for the Jazz with Cody is that Cody is probably going to barely play this year.

Ace has tons of defensive upside, but is probably going to be bad defensively this year as he's 18 and was bad defensively in college. The Jazz have put bizarrely low expectations on Hendricks this year (saying they don't expect him to be 100% for the whole season) so we'll see with him.
 
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