I don't deny that Dallas is in the conversation. I'm merely saying, and giving my reasons for so saying, why I am less worried about them.
I didn't count Niang because I don't know when he'll return, and I didn't count Svi because my understanding was that he's a career end-of-bencher (garbage time specialist) rather than a bona fide, established rotation player. However, looking at his career average minutes played, I may have been hasty in making that assumption. (I also forgot to count D-Lo for Dallas, so add one more established rotation player, regardless of how flawed.) We'll see how many more games Davis plays for Dallas this year.
However, this doesn't change my conclusion that Dallas, overall, has a superior roster to the Jazz and is likely to end with a better record, barring some significant development. This comes with the caveat (as always) that I could well be wrong.
I'll see Dalla's PG issues and raise it the Jazz's center issue. Nurkic is good at many things, but defense isn't one of them. With him in the middle, our hopes for fielding a consistently credible defense are vanishingly small, and defense is much more our problem than our offense (although one might think otherwise after the Houston game yesterday).
I absolutely agree with you that I want to see more of Taylor/Cody/Brice. I'm frustrated that Hardy refuses to give them regular minutes, and, in Brice's case, more of them.
I notice the strawman you snuck in there. I'm not claiming that our players are risking being scarred for life; I've only noted what I see as an eminently reasonable proposition that the conflicting messages and countervailing pressures they're facing don't necessarily create the ideal environment for player development. I hardly see this as a radical concern.
