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Name a player that wouldve won Stockton & Malone rings.

LogGrad98 said:
Yes but I would argue that with Stockton and Malone the best thing to add is efficiency and secondary playmaking, which they got in Hornacek. Rarely would they have handed the ball to Houston with Stockton and Malone on the floor together to make his own shot. That would happen mostly out of broken plays or maybe short shot clock scenarios. I think if you could have added Houston you keep Hornacek as the starter, as the perfect complement to Stockton and Malone, and bring Houston off the bench as a 20 ppg 6th man scoring threat. It's the bench unit that needs more individual shot creation, not a starting 5 where the primary PG is getting 12+ assists per game and the starting duo are both very high usage. Houston wasn't efficient enough for that. But off the bench with that team he could have been devastating. I remember watching those games just holding my breath when Stockton or Malone sat on the bench just hoping we didn't lose the lead, or get further in the hole, because our benches were usually just barely adequate. With Houston we could have watched them push the lead as a strategic advantage.
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Damn, now I like that. Our 2nd unit could've definitely used that. 2nd units in the 90's having to handle Houston would be tough!
 
JimLes said:
I know a lot of boomers still think advanced stats are nonsense, but I'm a big fan.

And boy, do the advanced stats favour Horny over Houston. Houston had a higher usage rating, but did less with it. His win shares per 48 were .094 for the career while Hornacek's were .154. Hornacek's average BPM over his career 2.9 while Houston's were 0.1! Houston's defensive BPM is particularly bad. To put things into perspective, 2.9 BPM for the career are low-end Hall-of-Famer numbers. Worthy was 1.9 and Isiah Thomas was 2.6 for the career. Bryon Russell's BPM is better than Houston's.

Play-by-play numbers aren't available prior to 1996, but in that first season they were kept, Hornacek's on/off per 100 possessions was +22.7. His on-court per 100 possessions was +14 that year. Those are All-NBA numbers. Houston's on/off numbers are pedestrian. In fact, in the seasons we have info for, Houston had negative on/off numbers 4 out of 9 of them. And this isn't after he broke down. Those 4 seasons are 4 of his first 6 Knicks seasons. The Knicks may have been better with him off the floor than with him on the floor some of those years, and the advanced stats point to defense as the most likely culprit.
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You have to actually watch the games though, lol. Looking at stats only tells you part of the story. Hornacek's intangibles were likely better than Houston's, but we are talking separate play styles.

Whether we had Houston starting, Hornacek off the bench.. Or Horny starting, Houston as 6th man I feel like he would be been perfect for this squad.
 
The Fresh Prince said:
You have to actually watch the games though, lol.
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I've watched more NBA games in the past 30 years than is probably healthy. I'm not ashamed to admit that there are so many variables to an NBA game that there isn't any way I could possibly notice or crunch all the information.

I can watch a game and not have to look at a box score to know someone had a great scoring night, or a poor shooting night, or set up his teammates for easy baskets a lot, or grabbed a ton of offensive rebounds. I can't watch a game and tell you what opponent shooting percentage at the rim was against the starting center versus the back up one. I can't tell you what on-off numbers were, or what someone's defensive rating was. I can't tell you how well someone shot depending on which player he was guarded by. I can't tell you how much ground a player covered on defense or which three player combination provided the best offensive output for a team.

"Eye test" is a nice little internet cliché, but there's a reason why even NBA scouts are relying less on their own eyes and brains and more on advanced stats. At the end of the day, everyone is trying to find metrics that show you what impact a basketball player has on the outcome of the game. The metrics we've come up with so far seem to point to Jeff Hornacek having a much bigger impact on the game than Allan Houston. Play styles don't factor into this too much.
 
Late to the game here - was Houston ever a real option of getting? He was drafted 11th in a draft where we had the 18th pick.
 
Here's a trade that would happen these days.

Summer of '97. The Jazz have just lost the Finals to the Bulls. Mitch Richmond is a 5-time All-Star towards the tail end of his prime and quite possibly the second best SG in the league. In the past 6 years, he's played in exactly one playoff series. He's got two years left on his deal and stands to make 3 million the upcoming season. The Kings aren't going anywhere and Richmond is upset at just how badly they've built around him and the kind of garbage they've drafted in the past decade.

The Jazz offer Chris Morris, who's on an expiring deal making the exact amount Richmond is. We throw in Eisley and Anderson as young, talented players, and they throw in Duane Causwell so the salaries match. The Jazz also throw in the 1998, 2000, and 2002 firsts, as well as swap options in 2001 and 2003. Any sane person would assume that by about 2000, this core of Richmond, Stockton, Malone, Hornacek would retire and the picks would be amazing. The Kings also clear up cap space and maybe get serious enough to convince their pick Bodiroga to come over from Europe.

Bam. Richmond is only a couple of inches shorter than Russell and could certainly log some time at SF. Horny played PG in college and in Philly, and either way, any combination of Richmond, Horny and Russell taking some of the 56(fifty-six!) minutes a game that Anderson, Morris, and Eisley played combined in the Finals is a good thing. Hell, Duane Causwell might actually have been playable instead of Ostertag or Keefe.
 
JimLes said:
I've watched more NBA games in the past 30 years than is probably healthy. I'm not ashamed to admit that there are so many variables to an NBA game that there isn't any way I could possibly notice or crunch all the information.

I can watch a game and not have to look at a box score to know someone had a great scoring night, or a poor shooting night, or set up his teammates for easy baskets a lot, or grabbed a ton of offensive rebounds. I can't watch a game and tell you what opponent shooting percentage at the rim was against the starting center versus the back up one. I can't tell you what on-off numbers were, or what someone's defensive rating was. I can't tell you how well someone shot depending on which player he was guarded by. I can't tell you how much ground a player covered on defense or which three player combination provided the best offensive output for a team.

"Eye test" is a nice little internet cliché, but there's a reason why even NBA scouts are relying less on their own eyes and brains and more on advanced stats. At the end of the day, everyone is trying to find metrics that show you what impact a basketball player has on the outcome of the game. The metrics we've come up with so far seem to point to Jeff Hornacek having a much bigger impact on the game than Allan Houston. Play styles don't factor into this too much.
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You might be right. But if I want to put the ball in a guards hand to make something offensively happen I'm putting it in Houston's hand.

If I need a guard that's going to help get the team better scoring opportunities, I'm going with Hornacek.

So, I think I'll go with @LogGrad98 idea that Allan Houston would've made for an amazing 6th man that would've torched 2nd units on a nightly basis.
 
The Fresh Prince said:
You might be right. But if I want to put the ball in a guards hand to make something offensively happen I'm putting it in Houston's hand.

If I need a guard that's going to help get the team better scoring opportunities, I'm going with Hornacek.

So, I think I'll go with @LogGrad98 idea that Allan Houston would've made for an amazing 6th man that would've torched 2nd units on a nightly basis.
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Oh, of course. My arguments are predicated on the idea of replacing Horny with Houston. You simply add him to the Jazz and that's a dynasty.

Hell, you add Lindsey Hunter from that Pistons team and the Jazz win a championship. That's how badly we needed someone, anyone. :D
 
Thee Idiotic Minivan K said:
Rony Seikaly? We did agree to a trade for him?

What happened exactly? Did he just flat out choose not to come? Can a player do that of did the jazz take it back because he wouldn’t come for a physical?
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The Jazz say it was due to Seikaly not wanting to come to Utah, if I recall. It was said he wanted to keep playing in warm climates and wanted the last 2 years of his deal guaranteed which he claimed the Jazz did not offer. He also had a foot injury that might have been part of the problem. Seikaly's camp claimed the Jazz killed the trade due to the injury. No one will ever really know I guess, but this is an interesting article about it.

saltcityhoops.com

What if: Rony Seikaly had come to the Utah Jazz in 1998?

Off the heels of an impressive 1996-97 season, which saw the team go 64-18 en route to its first-ever NBA Finals appearance, the Utah Jazz came back the following year more determined to not only g…
saltcityhoops.com saltcityhoops.com

imo he would have made the difference to get us a ring. The Bulls did not have the defenders to contain 2 post threats that could play off each other and could both hit a 20-footers with regularity. And his defense was at least on par with the other Jazz centers at the time. I contend if he had come to Utah we would have had at least 1 ring, maybe more.

He was on the downhill side of his career, so his production would drop off in subsequent seasons, but for 2, maybe even 3 years, we would have had a savvy and dangerous lineup of

Stockton
Hornacek
Russell
Malone
Seikaly

Every one a solid contributor with minimal weaknesses.

He would be my pick for the most realistic acquisition that could have pushed us over the top. But he was more concerned about being in the sun rather than in the winner's circle.
 
LogGrad98 said:
The Jazz say it was due to Seikaly not wanting to come to Utah, if I recall. It was said he wanted to keep playing in warm climates and wanted the last 2 years of his deal guaranteed which he claimed the Jazz did not offer. He also had a foot injury that might have been part of the problem. Seikaly's camp claimed the Jazz killed the trade due to the injury. No one will ever really know I guess, but this is an interesting article about it.

saltcityhoops.com

What if: Rony Seikaly had come to the Utah Jazz in 1998?

Off the heels of an impressive 1996-97 season, which saw the team go 64-18 en route to its first-ever NBA Finals appearance, the Utah Jazz came back the following year more determined to not only g…
saltcityhoops.com saltcityhoops.com

imo he would have made the difference to get us a ring. The Bulls did not have the defenders to contain 2 post threats that could play off each other and could both hit a 20-footers with regularity. And his defense was at least on par with the other Jazz centers at the time. I contend if he had come to Utah we would have had at least 1 ring, maybe more.

He was on the downhill side of his career, so his production would drop off in subsequent seasons, but for 2, maybe even 3 years, we would have had a savvy and dangerous lineup of

Stockton
Hornacek
Russell
Malone
Seikaly

Every one a solid contributor with minimal weaknesses.

He would be my pick for the most realistic acquisition that could have pushed us over the top. But he was more concerned about being in the sun rather than in the winner's circle.
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And those days the jazz or a complete pushover bitches!!
 
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