Getting Traded
Banned
If Rubio would settle for a back-up role and less money, I think we should keep him. The incentive for him is being part of a championship team that this would allow the Jazz to be.
They’ll work it out. I am only alarmed at the lack of cohesion and communication defensively that has led to way too many breakdowns and easy baskets that didn’t happen last year. By jan / feb we’ll be fine but it might get uglier first
The Jazz were 6-10 exactly a year ago. They're now 8-8.
They averaged just 99.0 PPG, 19.6 APG and 16.4 TOPG. They're at 106.8 PPG with 23.2 APG and 15.4 TOPG so far this season, despite being terrible from the line (71% to 83% last season), which has also cost them a couple of games. They could easily be 10-6 if they had just made their FTs.
Relative to the rest of the league, they were 26th in ORTG and 9th in DRTG with a -2.9 NETRTG whereas they're 22nd and 14th now with a -1.1 NETRTG, and that's including the 50-point dud against the Mavs that's had a strong impact due to the small sample size.
This board was going nuts a year ago, at such an early point of the season people were questioning Mitchell, Rubio, Ingles, Gobert, the FO and even Snyder... And you could read threads titled "Trade Gobert", "We Suck", "It's time for a true direction", "Bring back the triple wing and bring Rubio off the bench", "All-in for the tank" and of course "Central Tank Command: the official thread", which was already 13 pages long. Fast forward two months into mid January and threads were even worse. Fast forward a couple more weeks and people were starting to hop on the playoff bandwagon and singing Rudy, Rubio and Mitchell's praises, saying "I'm sorry" and "I'm so happy to be eating crow".
Stop whining, have some patience, and f***ing learn from the past. The Jazz are in a better position than they were a year ago, they're adapting to the new defensive rules, they're healthier and they're better pretty much across the board. They may ultimately fall out of the playoffs... or they may end up getting HCA just as easily, just like any team in the conference other than the Warriors, the Rockets (another fanbase that was freaking out stupidly 10 days ago) or the bottom feeders. They are not a championship contender (you could say no one is these days except for the All-NBA team playing in GS), but these guys were great on the second half of last season and they made some noise in the playoffs before Ricky got injured. Give them time, let them find their groove, deal with the bad nights and celebrate the good ones, and let's see where the team is come the All-Star break.