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83%, AK is the weakest link

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Realjazz

Active Member
I was looking at AK's stats and I noticed something interesting. Over the course of his career has played in 617 of the available 738 games. That is 83%. Boozer in contrast has played in 77% of the games of his career and people classify Booze as soft.

My belief is that AK is too soft/fragile/weak to play a full 82 game season. What do I base that on? The fact that the last time he played all 82 games was his rookie season. The past two seasons he has played in 76% of the available games. His body simply can't stand up to the day to day pounding the NBA generates.

With this in mind, I think it would be foolish to not move AK. Even if he were willing to settle for less money next year, why do we want a guy that over the past 2 years 25% of the time has not been able to play to eat up 7 or 8 million dollars of our cap space?

It's apparant that AK's best days are behind him. I see no reason why we don't move him this year for either a stud 2 guard or a shot blocking 5.
 
Realjazz said:
I was looking at AK's stats and I noticed something interesting. Over the course of his career has played in 617 of the available 738 games. That is 83%. Boozer in contrast has played in 77% of the games of his career and people classify Booze as soft.

My belief is that AK is too soft/fragile/weak to play a full 82 game season. What do I base that on? The fact that the last time he played all 82 games was his rookie season. The past two seasons he has played in 76% of the available games. His body simply can't stand up to the day to day pounding the NBA generates.

With this in mind, I think it would be foolish to not move AK. Even if he were willing to settle for less money next year, why do we want a guy that over the past 2 years 25% of the time has not been able to play to eat up 7 or 8 million dollars of our cap space?

It's apparant that AK's best days are behind him. I see no reason why we don't move him this year for either a stud 2 guard or a shot blocking 5.
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Nobody is willing to trade a stud guard or a shot blocking center for AK. That is the problem. And even if a team did do that. It would most likely be a bad contract. Meaning we would be in the luxury tax next year also. So its not a viable option. We either keep him or we trade him for nothing.
 
Twin Towers said:
Nobody is willing to trade a stud guard or a shot blocking center for AK. That is the problem. And even if a team did do that. It would most likely be a bad contract. Meaning we would be in the luxury tax next year also. So its not a viable option. We either keep him or we trade him for nothing.
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While I'm sure it will be very difficult, these kinds of deals do happen. However, even if we can't get one of those two assets back, I would advocate dumping him or offering him the MLE as a max for 2 or 3 years.
 
AK's a love-hate relationship. He's great when he's on the court but he's also on the sidelines when you need him the most. If he wasn't paid so much it obviously wouldn't be as big of a problem, you pay guys big $$$ to be out there helping the team.
 
Stickler said:
There were stretches last season where AK was our best player. You are irrational.
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That is the problem AK can only be counted on for a short stretch. Last year he missed the Nuggets and most of the Laker series but got little criticism for it. Yea the other guy is the irrational one so you must be the delusional one. AK is overrated. He fizzled out after a couple good years. Yes he can show up every once in a while but as players get old they become less reliable or unable to be consistent especially an average player like AK.
 
r_u_s_t_b_u_c_k_e_t said:
now i get it: your second sentence is a rebuttal of the premise of your first sentence.
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Incorrect. AK won games for us last year. He wasn't consistent over the course of the entire year -- and especially disappointed towards the end, with those repeated hamstring injuries. But there was a stretch of 20 games or so when AK was playing terrific basketball. We went 18-2 during that span, and Deron Williams said AK was our most important player, and that when he plays well, we are very very hard to beat. I agreed. When AK brings it, the Jazz can be pretty spectacular. Do I wish he brought it more? Do I wish he was the AK of old? Do I wish he played every game? Yes, of course.

But he's not even close to being the "weakest" link. Is he our worst player? On the contrary. Does he miss the most games of all our players? Is he the only guy who suffered injuries last year? Come on.
 
Not that it matters since we lost but do you remember the impact AK had during game 3 with limited minutes against the lakers?
 
We have had AK for quite a while. During that time we've found out some things.

1. He is one of the most intriging players in the NBA and can be a huge difference maker.

2. He is not durable. His injuries are legit. It's not like he has some wierd soft tissue foot injury that keeps him out for 20 games. He is too frail to take a full 82 game schedule.

3. We are spending a crap load of money on a guy that hasn't played 80 games in a season since 2003 and in fact has only broke 70 games played twice in the past 7 years....

4. Dude has a jacked up back. Over the past few years he has missed quite a few games because of a bad lower back. Guess what, that's not going to get better with age.

The experiment has come and gone and we know the result. Time to move on.
 
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