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Story of The Season: Injuries

It just kind of feels like an all around bleh season. Like nothing really came of it at all.

We started out looking pretty awesome. Then it was just peaks and valleys from there with no real consistency.

Gobert didn't improve at all, and may have gotten worse.

Hayward has about plateaued and we are now just wasting his career every time we don't make the playoffs.

Hood is the most inconsistent dude on a team full of inconsistent dudes.

It's looking more and more likely that Favors isn't going to take that next step.

Burks was out most of the year.

As was Exum.

The only thing I think you can get excited about from this year is Lyles.

Other than that I just think we'll remember this as that year we pissed away a **** load of games, and nothing else really happened.

I suppose we've basically confirmed (if we hadn't already) that there isn't a superstar on the team. But that's not really a good thing and we can't really do anything about it.
 
King Cy said:
Other Story of The Season: We started a 3rd string PG the entire year.
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This.

This team had ups and downs, injuries, but the PG issue was a structural issue the whole season : Burke is a bust as a starting PG (it happens, his future is at best as a DJ Augustin/Nate Robinson Thibodeau type offensive dynamo off the bench, at best), Exum who struggled mightily last year on O was at least a lockdown D but got injured and Neto or Mack are ok to have on a bench, not to play 48 minutes...

THIS is the issue to be addressed in the offseason.
 
bigmike said:
A combination of inexperience, injuries, and maybe not being quite good enough.

Rudy needs to get a lot better, our point guards suck, Rodney Hood is extremely streaky, Alec needs to stay on the court.

Fave and Hayward, no complaints (but I do find GH a tad overrated).
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Agree with everything but the Hayward part. He played his *** off the last few games to get into the playoffs and had solid games except he could not buy a 3 vs Mavericks. No one said he's a tier 1 star. He is what he is. He's really good just not a Superstar.
 
Saying injuries isn't an excuse is ridiculous. Are you telling me if the Jazz had played a full season with Burks and Exum they would have still missed the playoffs? I agree that the injuries weren't the only reason but it was a major factor. The real problem is that the Jazz bench is horrible.

I think moving Mack to the bench and having Burk play will help tremendously. However the Jazz need scoring off the bench. It is painfully obvious. Lyles needs to play more. I would not bring back Burke, Booker, CJ these guys are replaceable and not part of the future. Ingles should get less minutes. He is good for chemistry but should play spot minutes. The most worrisome part of this team is how mentally weak the team is.

Is there any alpha dog on this team? Right now I don't see any guy who has the confidence to say I am the guy. What I am saying is mentally the Jazz are weak and too nice. Favors needs to play angry all the time but is too nice. Exum seems too nice. Hayward is the closest we have but he is a number #2 option. Hood doesn't consistently have the killer mentality either. Gobert has this mentality on defense but is too limited on offense to be the guy. I don't think Lyles has it either. He displays it somethings but then disappears. He is young maybe he can be the one but right now it is asking too much for him to be the guy since he doesn't even start.

I think without the injuries the Jazz would have easily made the playoffs but to get where they want to be they are going to need more than improvement within. They have to vastly improve the bench. Look at the Clips they bring Jamal Crawford and Paul Pierce off the bench. The front office needs to show some balls this off season and bring in proven vets who can score or they will find themselves in the lottery for a few more years.
 
cowhide said:
Saying injuries isn't an excuse is ridiculous. Are you telling me if the Jazz had played a full season with Burks and Exum they would have still missed the playoffs? I agree that the injuries weren't the only reason but it was a major factor. The real problem is that the Jazz bench is horrible.

I think moving Mack to the bench and having Burk play will help tremendously. However the Jazz need scoring off the bench. It is painfully obvious. Lyles needs to play more. I would not bring back Burke, Booker, CJ these guys are replaceable and not part of the future. Ingles should get less minutes. He is good for chemistry but should play spot minutes. The most worrisome part of this team is how mentally weak the team is.

Is there any alpha dog on this team? Right now I don't see any guy who has the confidence to say I am the guy. What I am saying is mentally the Jazz are weak and too nice. Favors needs to play angry all the time but is too nice. Exum seems too nice. Hayward is the closest we have but he is a number #2 option. Hood doesn't consistently have the killer mentality either. Gobert has this mentality on defense but is too limited on offense to be the guy. I don't think Lyles has it either. He displays it somethings but then disappears. He is young maybe he can be the one but right now it is asking too much for him to be the guy since he doesn't even start.

I think without the injuries the Jazz would have easily made the playoffs but to get where they want to be they are going to need more than improvement within. They have to vastly improve the bench. Look at the Clips they bring Jamal Crawford and Paul Pierce off the bench. The front office needs to show some balls this off season and bring in proven vets who can score or they will find themselves in the lottery for a few more years.
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A healthy Burks off the bench does carry some great punch for next year though.
 
Lack of point guard
Lack of a star player.
Injuries.
Those are the issues.

Our 4th big and our 4th wing is not a problem.
 
fishonjazz said:
Lack of point guard
Lack of a star player.
Injuries.
Those are the issues.

Our 4th big and our 4th wing is not a problem.
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Lack of star player is a problem to win it all or go very deep, not to qualify for the playoffs. Point guard first and injuries second as reasons for this comeupshortance.
 
veji1 said:
Lack of star player is a problem to win it all or go very deep, not to qualify for the playoffs. Point guard first and injuries second as reasons for this comeupshortance.
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I agree. The main point i was making is that those talking about our problem being that we need to upgrade booker, withey, and ingles (our 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wing) to be good team are incorrect. 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wings dont have much of an effect on how good a team is.
Check this out. The jazz 4th big is booker and 5th big is withey. Their 4th wing is ingles. Now i will compare those guys against the 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wing of the other "good" teams in the league. To make sure i didn't cherry pick i qualified "good" as the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th seeds in the west and east. (i figure the top 2 seeds in each conference are better than good and the bottom 2 seeds in each conference are worse than good. Probably being generous here since simply getting into the playoffs qualifies a team as good to a lot of people)

Atlanta hawks: 4th big is kris humphries. 5th big is mike scott. 4th wing is tim hardaway jr. Are they much better than booker, withey and ingles? I dont think so. Difference is that those guys for atlanta never play cause their team is healthy.

Miami heat: 4th big is udonis haslem. 5th big is josh mcroberts. 4th wing is justice winslow. Not much better than what we have. again, our guys played a lot more minutes cause of all our injuries.

Boston celtics: 4th big is tyler zeller. 5th big is jonas jerebko. 4th wing is james young.

OKC thunder: 4th big is nick collison. 5th big is nazr mohammed. 4th wing is kyle singler/anthony morrow

LA clippers: 4th big is cole aldrich. 5th big is non existent. they only have 4 bigs listed on their depth chart. 4th wing is jamal crawford. Crawford is shooting 40% from the field and 34% from three this year btw.

Porland Trailblazers: 4th big is noah vonleh. 5th big is cliff alexander. 4th wing is allen crabbe.


So looking at that list i cant see many guys that you could replace booker, withey, and ingles with that would suddenly make us much better. Most of the time 4th and 5th bigs and 4th wings dont really even play much and if they do play a lot (like with the jazz) then you probably wont be very good because that means your important players were hurt.


So what the difference between the jazz and those "good" teams?
#1. Point guards. Teague, dragic, isiah thomas, westbrook, cp3, lillard. Exum would have helped but not enough imo.
#2. Health.
#3. Star players. CP3, griffin, lillard, westbrook, durant, wade, bosh, thomas.
#4. experience.

all of those "good" teams have at least 3 of those 4 things and most have all 4.
The jazz have ZERO of those things on that list.

The problem with the jazz is not who their 4th and 5th bigs and wings are imo.
 
I forgot about the 6th seeds in my post above.

Memphis: 4th big is ryan hollins. 5th big is the birdman. 4th wing is lance stephenson (thats a pretty good one as far as 4th wings go!)

Charlotte: 4th big is frank kaminsky. 5th big is tyler hansboro. (Not bad there) 4th wing is troy daniels.
 
cowhide said:
Saying injuries isn't an excuse is ridiculous. Are you telling me if the Jazz had played a full season with Burks and Exum they would have still missed the playoffs? I agree that the injuries weren't the only reason but it was a major factor. The real problem is that the Jazz bench is horrible.

Is there any alpha dog on this team? Right now I don't see any guy who has the confidence to say I am the guy. What I am saying is mentally the Jazz are weak and too nice. Favors needs to play angry all the time but is too nice. Exum seems too nice. Hayward is the closest we have but he is a number #2 option. Hood doesn't consistently have the killer mentality either. Gobert has this mentality on defense but is too limited on offense to be the guy. I don't think Lyles has it either. He displays it somethings but then disappears. He is young maybe he can be the one but right now it is asking too much for him to be the guy since he doesn't even start.
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Surely the injuries spoiled the Jazz season. But what about Quin's one-dimensional offense searching wide open 3s? Yesterday game showed that if we don't hit threes, we don't have a plan B on offense.

I agree with you about the softness of some players, but it is one of the coach tasks to transmit "sports nastiness" to the players in clutch times, crucial games, etc. Usually in sport, the team character reflects their coach character.

It is unacceptable that yesterday the Mavs veterans were more hungry to win than our young players.
 
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