Poll Result: What's the main problem so far this season?

So far the Utah Jazz have been one of the better teams in the conference, though not one of the top 5 teams in the league. There are some serious holes in the way the team has been playing, and as a result, the record Utah has produced reflects this -- as of today, the Utah Jazz are 11-7, which is 3rd best in the Northwest Division. There were 30 votes in this poll, and it's no big surprise to see which category was voted the main problem so far this season. My 'joke' entry ended up being second though, so that was surprising . . .

	Votes	%	Notes
Not defending the perimeter	5	16%	According to 82games.com, the Jazz are 3rd worst in defending the three -- 39.4 3pt%. Just re-watching the Knicks game shows how important this is. That link does support the fact that the Jazz are very solid at defending inside shots (relative to the NBA average, the Jazz are 5th best in the league -- without having any real shot blocking guy in there).
Not making open shots	3	10%	Well, the Jazz are 2nd in the NBA in made dunks (106 so far this season), and shoot 61.4% from inside. Pretty much, most of the time, the Jazz are making their easy shots. However, I've seen countless examples of missed layups, missed post up shots when our guys are posted up against smaller defenders, and way too many missed open threes. We make one of those open threes each game and we have a much better record.
Not healthy enough	12	40%	This is the big reason -- and really, the only one we need. If the Jazz are healthy, they aren't losing 7 games this month. Last game the TV crew showed a graphic of how many games the Jazz players have lost to injury/illness this season. Right now we sit at more than 60. Last season alone the Jazz missed only about 45.
Not running?	0	0%	No one picked this. Without Deron Williams running the half court the only time the back up point guards were useful was in a running game -- this was especially true of Brevin Knight who doesn't even know all the plays yet. (He admitted as such) Our offense (which, btw, isn't even scoring 100 ppg this season) is predicated on point guard play. When our PGs were busy turning the ball over, or taking early shots, the rest of our team can't get it going.
Not playing every game at home	10	33%	I put this up there as a joke, but apparently 10 people felt that it was a real reason. True, the Jazz usually win their games at home, but Utah lost 2 games there in the last week (Chicago Bulls and NJ Nets) -- just because it's a home game doesn't mean that it's a win anymore.

A little early but . . . NBADraft.net's 2010 Top 10

This is really premature, but as Jazz fans, we all know why we should be keeping an eye on this . . . Well, here is nbadraft.net's mock draft for 2010:

1. John Wall, 6'4 PG
2. Ricky Rubio, 6'4, PG
3. Xavier Henry, 6'6, SG
4. Jrue Holiday, 6'4, PG/SG
5. Derrick Favors, 6'9, PF
6. Gani Lawal, 6'9, PF
7. Austin Daye, 6'10, SF
8. Donatas Motiejunas, 7'1, PF
9. Davin Ebanks, 6'8, SF
10. Scotty Hopson, 6'6, SG

I'm pretty sure that David Stern would do whatever it takes to make sure that we don't get Ricky Rubio, even though he's a dead ringer for a former Jazz player that we may all know . . . Who knows if any of those 10 guys will be true Lotto picks (i.e. the top 14 picked each year), or even if the Knicks will be in the lotto by then? (Thanks, guys . . . ) Even more surprising would be to guess what the Jazz would need in 2010.

There's just so much up in the air that will "eventually" sort itself out after next off-season. (God willing) So it'll be much easier to forecast a drafting direction for future years after that's all taken care of. I do know that if Price and Knight get short contracts from the Jazz this following off-season that the Jazz may be in need of a PG to help Deron out time to time.

By 2010 if our shooting guard situation still necessitates the drafting of young SGs then our current crop of 3 young guys (CJ, Ronnie B and Mobe) must not have panned out. Even more startling would be if one of our three recent centers all end up as duds (Fesenko, Koufos and Tomic). I'm guessing we'll either be on the look out for a PF -- we can't honestly expect to have Boozer, Okur, Kirilenko and Millsap all on the roster by then, and will need to reload at the 4 for sure.

Though . . . it would be fun to see Ricky as a rookie playing with our 2nd unit throwing oops to Andrei, and making crazy passes to Korver . . .

Utah Jazz Pre-Season 2008-2009: Top Transaction of the Off-Season

After being bounced out of the 2007-2008 Playoffs by the eventual Western Conference Champion LA Lakers the Jazz were faced with some glaring roster talent holes. The top three (for as long as this group as been together) have been:

1. the need for a defensive bigman,
2. a defensive wing player,
3. and more insurance at the point.

That last point is interesting because with Deron Williams' being drafted by the Jazz in the 2005 Draft you'd think that we'd be pretty solid there. It's actually a double edged sword because we have such a good point guard that we rely on him so much (over 37 mpg the last two seasons). If something were to happen to him (knock on wood, or well, knock on the current injury) then we would need to make up that 37 mpg that he's not going to be able to play somewhere. For those of you who are late to the party, this is exactly the current situation that the Utah Jazz are in.

And because of it, and a variety of other reasons, trading for Brevin Knight was the top transaction of the Off-Season.

But back to those points for a bit . . .

The need for a defensive bigman has not been taken care of, though, the Jazz have been drafting size for a bit now (Kyrylo Fesenko in 2007, Kosta Koufos and Ante Tomic in 2008 -- all three are 7'1 or better). The law of averages suggests that maybe one of them will develop into a better interior defender than either Carlos Boozer or Mehmet Okur sometime down the road. As it stands right now, Fesenko's blocks per foul ratio was already better than both of theirs (significantly) as a rookie.

The Defensive Wing project (aka. Ronnie Brewer), on the other hand, is going into it's third year of existence and early projections look promising. So really, the only thing Kevin O'Connor (who is severely underrated as a GM) had to address urgently this off-season was shoring up point guard. [Which is fine, as he's going to be really busy next off-season]

So what did Kevin do this off-season? He turned Jason Hart (our 3rd string guy) into Brevin Knight (who might actually start for us if Deron is out for longer than 2 weeks). Hart was so bad for us last season that trading him for Miami Heat's Chris Quinn would have clearly been a great trade for the Jazz. Trading for a better player, a guy who has a career assist to turn over ratio greater than 3:1 over a decade in the league, mind you, makes this transaction as a no brainer. The absolute cherry on top is the fact that Knight makes less money than Hart, and Knight is an expiring contract.

It's an under-rated move because it wasn't a team with a lot of cap space signing a big name guy like Elton Brand or Baron Davis . . . but as far as reward goes this was huge. Knight is a steadying force, a veteran guy who can help us win on the road (we won on the road with Fisher, we lost on the road when our veteran presence was Harpring), and a really tenacious defender. He gets a lot of steals and he's really scrappy. He can play man-to-man defense against the shorter, quicker guards. (There's currently a pretty good one right now that the press talks about)

Lastly, with the events of this Pre-season resulting in a very key injury (that we shouldn't be too worried about), hind-sight suggests that out of all of the transactions made this off-season (and there was more than one) . . . that this was the most important one to make.

Really, if we had to go one week without Deron and rely on Hart and Price I'd really be worried. We could conceivably go for one and a half months without Deron now that we have Knight and Price and still be leading our division.

Trading for Brevin Knight was the top transaction of the Off-Season. Thanks Kevin O'Connor!

ESPN's Chad Ford likes him some Utah Jazz

In a recent ESPN Podcast (click on that if you want to listen to it) Ford talks for about 2 minutes about how gosh darn awesome the Jazz are. He starts by suggesting (what a lot of people thought, including himself) that the Jazz success in the 80's and 90's were primarily due to John Stockton and Karl Malone; however, he now sees that the influence of the system and Jerry Sloan had a lot to do with it. Case in point: this version of the Jazz who are pretty strong -- partly due to the system, and partly because of shrewd roster moves by GM Kevin O'Connor.

Furthermore, success in the Jazz system is predicated upon strong point guard play -- and none of this recent success would be possible without Deron Williams. Who Ford "thinks is one of the top 3 point guards in the NBA" (Chad Ford, 2008, via ESPN Podcast). He goes on about how dominant he is.

Next Ford talks about Boozer being an anchor in the paint; mentions AK-47 as a talented role player whose true contributions do not always show up on the box score; and that Mehmet Okur stretches the defense and had an amazing second half of the season for us. Surprisingly he gets himself a good seat on the Ronnie Brewer bandwagon and talks about his athleticism, his ability to play the passing lanes, he's potentially a ball hawk, and really is what the Jazz team are missing. Basically he's suggesting that he's going to be that athletic perimeter defender that we haven't had since, well, uh, Blue Edwards? (Jazz history isn't rife with great athletic shooting guard lore) Over-all the Utah Jazz's depth, head coach and system are hard to ignore. Such that:

	"I think that if anybody is going to be able to stop the Lakers this year it's the Utah Jazz -- they're great at home, they are getting [increasingly] confident, they have a great mixture of youth and veterans, and I think at the end of the day, if there's a team that is going to surprise us in the West, it's going to be the Utah Jazz." (Chad Ford, 2008, via ESPN Podcast)
Chad Ford, ESPN

I haven't heard any of his other team podcasts, but I doubt he's going to be really critical (well, maybe the Pacers and Bobcats...) in any of them. If you want, you can listen to them all here. Over all, I agree with him -- our bench is under rated, our system works, and we have some athletic young talent for once. NBA Finals here we come!