This is going to seem crazy

[InGameStrategy]

Koufos lost his confidence pretty badly. I think he could still make it in the league, but it's going to be an uphill battle. The biggest problem he has is he doesn't have any one skill to buy him time on the court to learn. He's not a great defender or rebounder, doesn't score, hasn't proved he can shoot from outside like he did in college, so there isn't really any reason to sub him in. He came out too early. He needs a Euro stint.

Um, not that Jarron "Tree" Collins should be the level of skill to which any NBA player should be measured, but Koufos scored and rebounded at a higher rate (and fouled at a lower rate) than Jarron Collins did in his first year. Even last year, which was perceived to be pretty underwhelming for KK2, he outpaced Tree again (although Kouf's TOs did go up).

This is not adjusted, of course, for the opposition--it would be near impossible to do so--but the bottom line is that Tree, a second-rounder, got nearly nearly three times the playing time that Boom Beyotches did in his first two years. Tree started a bunch of games, but that means that he was playing alongside better players also.

I simply don't buy that Koufos (or Fes) has been developed well, because on-court time is part of that development, and Sloan didn't find that time for either of them. The bigger priority was to develop Fes, but that didn't even happen, even when Memo was sucking wind (literally sometimes; figuratively sometimes) and when Boozer + Millsap wasn't all that effective. It wasn't until last spring's playoffs that Memo's and Kiri's injury forced Sloan's hand to put Fes on the court. For the most part, he held his own, but he was learning along the way, and he would have been much better off with a few extra MPG during the season. Those minutes should've come from Okur or Millsap (who could've had plenty of progress on 23 to 25 minutes per game than the 27 MPG average that he got).

What is ironic is that Sloan, who had preached for years against a vast use of the 3-point shot, seemed mesmerized by Memo's Money ball, even when Utah started to have multiple outside-shooting options elsewhere. I'm skeptical of Okur's value even in clutch time--the way that Stephon Marbury dribbled right past him for a Knicks victory comes to mind--but even after having two legit 7-footers for at least a couple of years, neither one of them has had any semblance of regular minutes for development when providing them was feasible. One thing is to bench Fes for his off-court goofiness; in Kouf's case, though, he seemed to work super-hard and still didn't get any nod. Talk about NOT motivating your players. Heck, it's not like we were not going to risk playoff home court advantage or something--oh, wait . . .

 

[Jazz4ever]

Lets be realistic, the Jazz never gave him a chance. You can't put a guy in for 5 minutes every other night and expect him to be in the flow of the game. He is still younger than half the rookies entering the league this year and its a known fact big men take a long time to develop. Judging from what I saw in summer league, I'd rather the Jazz kept him and gave Minny Fesenko in a s&t.

 

[NCJazz]

Lets be realistic, the Jazz never gave him a chance. You can't put a guy in for 5 minutes every other night and expect him to be in the flow of the game. He is still younger than half the rookies entering the league this year and its a known fact big men take a long time to develop. Judging from what I saw in summer league, I'd rather the Jazz kept him and gave Minny Fesenko in a s&t.

I think the main reason why the front office is higher on Fes is because he can guard the big big men of the league better than Koufos. Also Fes is actually a littler cheaper as well. Also who is going to give us the quotes that Fes does.