Hypotehtical

[Gyp Rosetti]

A better coach may have squeezed 5 more wins out of this club. You can't squeeze blood from turnips and that's all there is to it.

There's nothing like 4 or 5 miraculous come from behind wins to get fans extra excited about a group of scrubs. What fans lost sight of during that stretch is the Jazz were being dominated for 3 to 3 1/2 quarters and then hit half a dozen shots in a row combined with a set of defensive stops. Good or lucky play for 5 minutes didn't erase the 43 bad minutes prior. You can't quit on Sloan if you never started in the first place.

AK has all -NBA defensive ability. Jefferson has more length and toughness than Booze ever did. Elson and Fes brought effort and some d when they were on the floor. So do Millsap and Hayward. Williams and Miles aren't totally incapable. I hear what you're saying but let's not pretend our team sucks. With Thibodeau, I see our team having bought in, players having been held truly accountable, and a wave of momentum from said changes that would have carried us into the playoffs with somewhere around 50-53 wins, the same as always, yet peaking at the right time and improving every day.

 

[billyshelby]

AK has all -NBA defensive ability. Jefferson has more length and toughness than Booze ever did. Elson and Fes brought effort and some d when they were on the floor. So do Millsap and Hayward. Williams and Miles aren't totally incapable. I hear what you're saying but let's not pretend our team sucks. With Thibodeau, I see our team having bought in, players having been held truly accountable, and a wave of momentum from said changes that would have carried us into the playoffs with somewhere around 50-53 wins, the same as always, yet peaking at the right time and improving every day.

Pretty dead on. Don't know about the wins. The injuries haven't been kind. But we would have been playing cohesive basketball with a system. The Bulls with Booze and no Thibs would be an average team in the East fighting to get into the top 4. With him, and with his defense especially, they have become elite. It's just that people haven't really caught on to how great a team can be when they play defense so fantastically like the Bulls.

 

[franklin]

AK has all -NBA defensive ability. Jefferson has more length and toughness than Booze ever did. Elson and Fes brought effort and some d when they were on the floor. So do Millsap and Hayward. Williams and Miles aren't totally incapable. I hear what you're saying but let's not pretend our team sucks. With Thibodeau, I see our team having bought in, players having been held truly accountable, and a wave of momentum from said changes that would have carried us into the playoffs with somewhere around 50-53 wins, the same as always, yet peaking at the right time and improving every day.

This team is terrible and has been all season long. 5 come from behind wins where they played 6 or 7 good/lucky minutes was enough to blind fans.

The Jazz have been flawed from the get go. I can't disagree more with the notion that AK has all NBA defensive potential. He's older and slower than he used to be, and he was only good on a terrible team. Guy's a role player. Millsap is undersized, and, though he tries hard, can't stop many of the guys he's asked to defend. CJ rides the sides of basket attackers, and has shown zero ability to do much otherwise. That's a recipe for easy assists and free throws. Sad to say, but Raja (maybe Earl Watson) has been the best help defender only because he still tries. But he's too old to be effective man-on-man anymore. D-Will can't defend worth a damn. His replacement isn't much better at all. Fes fouls like he wants to sit back down. I wont' take anything away from Elson--hell of a job for what he is and asked to do.

The team is overall laterally slow. They can't help defend with the smallest amount of effectiveness because they can't flash sideways and get back to their man. Pick and roll defense is attrocious. It's not exactly an art to teach defending the P-n-R. If Sloan couldn't do it and Corbin can't do it then TT isn't going to do it.

Defensive schemes only work if you have the talent to make them work. TT may have pushed a few better looks, and may have inspired the guys to play harder, but he isn't going to feed the guys quick fiber builder and get their legs spinning faster.

And don't get me started on how the Jazz aren't smart enough to run the flex offense but will somehow magically jell into a collective defensive genius. Effective defense takes twice the teamwork and meshing that offense requires as it's all reading/reactionary based.