I'm pretty sure everyone should just chill... 3 or 4 years ago you would not have thought gsw were a contender either. Players develop and things change.
4 years ago, the Warriors WEREN'T contenders and they were never going to be, Their main guys were Lee, Ellis, Curry, Thompson, Nate Robinson and Dorell Wright, GS recognized they had a flawed core and they made some bold trades to revamp their roster. Was it risky? You bet; Lacob got booed off the court a few years back.
And that's my point. Sorry, Bawse, I should have capitalized the entire thread title to make it even more important, The Jazz have too many defenders and not any shooters. Generally it's the opposite in the NBA; teams have scorers but not players who want to or can defend. IMO, these Jazz are the reverse image of the team back in 2005. Jazz needed to trade a couple of guys while they still had value to bring balance to the team (like Boozer and AK).
It's a tradeoff, but something that needs to be addressed, IMO. End of game situations: how much better would Utah be with 4 guys on the court who could shoot 3's? When the offense is sputtering miserably like it did against SA, why can't Utah bring in decent shooters? Or have 1-2 better shooters in the lineup to begin with? We've seen OVER and OVER again that to have even ONE player in the lineup who isn't an offensive threat makes the team just too easy to defend (Eaton, Ostertag, AK, Brewer, etc). It's just SO easy to game plan for the Jazz: let Utah make their 1,000 passes on the perimeter; overplay Favors and expect Gordon to take the step-back. Hood is a threat so contest what he does. But completely ignore the PG and don't treat the 3PT shot as a threat.
But yes, by all means let's wait for Duck and Run to come back from a major injury to be our savior, since he showed SO much offensive prowess his rookie season. That 35%/31% shooting percentage (when he wasn't too afraid to shoot) certainly puts fear in the hearts of every opposing PG. I know, the rookie to sophomore jump - or was that sophomore to junior - is the biggest improvement period. I mean we certainly saw the last top-10 pick we had make a huge leap.