2011 NBA Free Agent List

[NAOS]

#1. I haven't seen anything in Jefferson's game that allows me to believe that he can be a productive teammate without also being the center-point of the offense.

#2. I haven't seen anything that allows me to believe that a Jefferson-led team can be anything resembling a contender.

billy, you may be right that GVC over-extrapolates certain percentages to make his elaborate points, but you haven't realized that we needn't go beyond #s 1 and 2 (above) in order to make a solid, simple claim against Jefferson. I could argue that any suite of statistics you marshall to prove YOUR point is an inaccurate transcendence of these basic QUALITIES of his game.

 

[NAOS]

One last thing from me on this. I am sympathetic to billy's claim that Jefferson has valuable and rare skills that should be harnessed by the correct system. That said, given my hesitancy to project the evolution of his game beyond a ball-dominant one, I think his minutes should be distributed into the second unit in much greater quantity. According to this model, we can construct an offense wherein Jefferson works more of a grind-it-out two-man game, if not designed for maximal efficiency then at at least for ball and tempo control.

I like to think of this model as a good off-speed pitch. If we were to trot out Harris, Burks, Hayward, Millsap, and Favors, we'd excel in run-and-gun, fast-tempo settings, whereas a unit of Watson, Bell, AK, Jefferson, and Kanter could abuse some folks physically.

I'd like to see the Jazz control the tempo of the game a lot more than we have in the past couple of seasons. According to this focus, Jefferson belongs with the second unit.

 

[trigg3r]

One last thing from me on this. I am sympathetic to billy's claim that Jefferson has valuable and rare skills that should be harnessed by the correct system. That said, given my hesitancy to project the evolution of his game beyond a ball-dominant one, I think his minutes should be distributed into the second unit in much greater quantity. According to this model, we can construct an offense wherein Jefferson works more of a grind-it-out two-man game, if not designed for maximal efficiency then at at least for ball and tempo control.

I like to think of this model as a good off-speed pitch. If we were to trot out Harris, Burks, Hayward, Millsap, and Favors, we'd excel in run-and-gun, fast-tempo settings, whereas a unit of Watson, Bell, AK, Jefferson, and Kanter could abuse some folks physically.

I'd like to see the Jazz control the tempo of the game a lot more than we have in the past couple of seasons. According to this focus, Jefferson belongs with the second unit.

I disagree. You either live with what he is which is a ball dominant player who tries to be the best on his team in the starting lineup or you trade him. I am currently falling toward the side of trading him and getting value out of him in a deal.

 

[NAOS]

I disagree. You either live with what he is which is a ball dominant player who tries to be the best on his team in the starting lineup or you trade him. I am currently falling toward the side of trading him and getting value out of him in a deal.

I'm not saying you should be following my posts, but I've loudly supported the idea of trading him. This is my "keep option", which, in all honesty, is sounding more and more attractive to me. Unless we can get a proven starter at SF, then I think we should explore his game a bit more at the beginning of next season. But, he's first on the block, no doubt.

 

[sepanol]

#1. I haven't seen anything in Jefferson's game that allows me to believe that he can be a productive teammate without also being the center-point of the offense.

#2. I haven't seen anything that allows me to believe that a Jefferson-led team can be anything resembling a contender.

billy, you may be right that GVC over-extrapolates certain percentages to make his elaborate points, but you haven't realized that we needn't go beyond #s 1 and 2 (above) in order to make a solid, simple claim against Jefferson. I could argue that any suite of statistics you marshall to prove YOUR point is an inaccurate transcendence of these basic QUALITIES of his game.

i agree

 

[sepanol]

Big Al: Comes onto a team that KG certainly couldn't make better for 2 years.

Big Al couldnt make us better as well. I had a lot of hopes that our team would make the western finals this year since boozer is gone and we got a 20/10 guy. But he couldnt make us any better than we were a year ago. At least i would expect him to help us grab a couple of wins down on the road when we lost on a streak in january and february.

The thing is , he scored lots of points even in some of the games we lost, but he somehow doesnt give me the feeling of a guy who can inspire the team with his leadership and help the team bring an end to the bad streaks. He scored 30 points against dallas but who cares, we lost by 20. Sometimes its more important to score 6 golden points at the 4th quarter and grab the win than 30 points which means nothing.
I just dont have the confidence in Jefferson that, he can be the first option, or the best scorer in a contender. He lacks some tools which cant be learned in time. Thats why I strictly wanna see him traded latest at the end of the upcoming season. Because he cant be a part of our team with a huge contract and no less ego if we are gonna be contender.

 

[Stifle Tower]

Big Al couldnt make us better as well. I had a lot of hopes that our team would make the western finals this year since boozer is gone and we got a 20/10 guy. But he couldnt make us any better than we were a year ago. At least i would expect him to help us grab a couple of wins down on the road when we lost on a streak in january and february.

The thing is , he scored lots of points even in some of the games we lost, but he somehow doesnt give me the feeling of a guy who can inspire the team with his leadership and help the team bring an end to the bad streaks. He scored 30 points against dallas but who cares, we lost by 20. Sometimes its more important to score 6 golden points at the 4th quarter and grab the win than 30 points which means nothing.
I just dont have the confidence in Jefferson that, he can be the first option, or the best scorer in a contender. He lacks some tools which cant be learned in time. Thats why I strictly wanna see him traded latest at the end of the upcoming season. Because he cant be a part of our team with a huge contract and no less ego if we are gonna be contender.

Wow, you're putting all that on Big Al? We also lost a very good SG and replaced him with Raja Freakin' Bell heading into the season.

The team was sailing along at 27-13 until a 6 game skid. Look back at the box scores...Jefferson had a couple of off games, but it was actually Millsap who tailed off the most. He averaged about 10 pts during that span. Deron also sprained his wrist, copped an attitude and started feuding with Sloan. You can't put all that on Jefferson. He actually had a higher PER than Millsap over the entire season. Boozer-Okur-Matthews was definitely better than Millsap-Jefferson-Bell (or a rookie who really struggled the first half of the year). Add a disinterested PG and the recipe for disaster was complete.

 

[NUMBERICA]

The team was sailing along at 27-13 until a 6 game skid.

You mean scraping along. The Jazz couldn't win almost any game easily because the offense was a disaster relative to how the Jazz had been performing in that regard. It's no mystery why the Jazz offense looked like the Timberwolves former offense half the time. A strong culture and real franchise player were the reason the team did as well as it for as long as it did, but the offensive struggle eroded both of those good things until they ultimately both crapper out. Not surprisingly at all, the Jazz shrugged and started just throwing the ball to Jefferson and his numbers exploded. Which corresponded to even more losses. Shocking.

And before using excuses about the rest of the roster, it's worth noting that the Jazz only had Matthews for one season and Korver wasnt that critical to the team's success either. Unless you're ready to pin all of the massive tail-off on Memo being injured (and you can't, because the Jazz had done just fine without him for stretches in the past), there's one huge glaring reason you can point to (even those other reasons are factors, I can't for the life of me see how missing some guys that weren't critical to how the offense functioned suddenly would run it into the ground). The Jazz offense was just painful last year.

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

I'll play for a sec:

Al was our best player once D.Will left. He was our #1 and #1a option on offense, our best rebounder with significant minutes, and one of the only bright spots along with Hayward's improvement.

Carry on.

 

[vj_74]

Big Al couldnt make us better as well. I had a lot of hopes that our team would make the western finals this year since boozer is gone and we got a 20/10 guy. But he couldnt make us any better than we were a year ago. At least i would expect him to help us grab a couple of wins down on the road when we lost on a streak in january and february.

.

Big Al had to adjust. For the first time in his life he was playing in a well structured offense. And also what we didnt know was Deron had already started running his own plays at that time. And with his injured wrist he was shooting pathetically. I wont pin all this on Al. No way. The Jazz did'nt have everyone on the same page AND they did not have the kind of consistent shooters to spread the floor and make things easier for everyone.

I am not saying Al is leadership material but he certainly was'nt the biggest cause of last season's problems. When the leader on the team and the coach are'nt on the same page you cant expect the new guy to come in and compensate for all that. It only got worse with Corbin taking over and a bunch of new guys running some plays slapped together between timeouts.