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We won’t win another game this season
Posted by: Adam on April 4th, 2011
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.I hope I’m wrong. Ending on a 13 game losing streak would suck, but I think that’s going to happen. I mean, when we can’t even beat the Wizards at home or the Kings on the road, how in the heck to do you think we are going to beat the Lakers, Blazers, Spurs, Hornets, and Nuggets (our final 5 games). Nuggets and Blazers are at home and Lakers, Spurs, and Hornets are on the road. Looking at that schedule and looking at how we have been playing, I don’t think we are going to win. If you disagree with me, please, tell me who we beat. The Jazz are pathetic. Disgusting. A disgrace to the game of basketball and to the state of Utah. I know that’s harsh, but I am absolutely disgusted at our team, our coach, our GM, and our owner. They are all terrible. Fire Kevin O’Conner. Make Greg Miller give the team to someone else. Fire Ty Corbin. It’s all pathetic. I don’t like any of those three. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But please, tell me who we are going to beat this season. I’m anxious to hear this.
Replies: 43
Views: 693
43 Responses
It would be silly to tell you that we are going to beat anyone. With the injuries we have, the loss of players, the loss of heart due to all the chaos, its hard to find a silver lining here. But to measure our team without having them all out there healthy on the floor is just wrong.. Back ups and reserve players assist and give you a breather. You cannot expect half a team of replacements to go out and win against the likes of the teams we have left.
We have not been a whole team all season long. Okur being out has been a huge hole. Could you imagine him healthy and with us all season long. Ok, lets not think about him. Since the All star break, excluding Okur, we have had a hand full of games with everyone healthy, and many more than that with multiple starters out injured. Makes it tough to win.
Count all the new faces, include a new head coach and assistant, expecting them to all come together in the middle of a season when your supposed to be gelling is not realistic. Do you think we will keep up with anyone else? Unrealistic at best. So when does things get better? Sorry, not this season. We still have injuries, new faces, and tough match ups.
Want to know what you do, watch for the good things. Shift your tunnel vision from winning to seeing what is good about our game. Hayward seems to be showing positive signs. Favors is growing. Evans still adds some excitement. There are still solid players on the court trying hard. Think of what may happen next season with a whole team of healthy solid starters and solid back ups. Our rookies have grown a bit, and are better for the exp they have gotten. Cross your fingers for the lottery.
What not to do, dont toss your tickets, scream, kick, pull out your hair.. It wont improve our standings, and it wont change anything else. Be careful what you wish for in new ownership, because right now you have a team, may not be a winning team but its a team. If you have a team, theres always hope that they can improve and win, but give or sell them to someone else, then what do you have? Guess you could root for the lakers. We had enough of their jerseys in our arena last game, maybe many have already changed teams..
Myself, I still root for my team. I still get excited for the jams, the blocked shots, and I am excited for next season. until then, I can only be happy for the little things. Better to have little things than nothing at all.
Actually there is a good chance to win the last game if the nuggets can’t move forward or backward in the standings ! Maybe the same will hold for the Hornets, if they let Paul and Ariza taking a breath before facing the spurs or the lakers.
Ok, I’m going to put the disclaimer on this that I was bitter last night when I wrote this. I thought the one game we could win in this stretch is the one against the Kings, but we got pummeled. I thought we could beat the Wizards at home as well since they had only won one road game all season. But no. We suck. And I have no faith in us winning any more this season because if we can’t compete with the Wizards or Kings, how we gonna compete with the other teams?
No, we shouldn’t get rid of all our management and coaches all at once, but I do think they need to do a better job. Because our woes this season is because of all the accumulation of horrible decisions by management all adding up and getting us at once.
I had pegged the Washington Wizards and Kings as our final two wins of the season. I thought that was realistic.
I see I was instead overly optimistic.
It’s because nobody can play together as a unit…we have about 6 pretty solid players and they all have good games opposite each other..and 2 are injured right now…so as a team now we have 4 solid players and they pick and choose when to give effort and do well instead of collectively as a team…So you have to drop your garbage players like bell(we can’t unfortunately unless we trade him or cut him and buy him out, price, c.j. (he might be good one day, but he is not mature enough to see what he does wrong and ultimately play better, he loves the 3 but he isnt that great at shooting it), Elson, Fes. When we get a better backup pg it won’t hurt to keep watson around as a benchwarmer in case of injuries. As fans we fall in love with these types of players but really they don’t do much to benefit the team on the court. They are all veterans but none of them are leaders which is what you want in your vets. We desperately need leadership and a strong defensive minded assistant coach. We have shown that our core players have the talent to hang with teams for 3 quarters, but we lack the mental toughness to go 48 minutes with any team that is even decent. I mean look at Weaver…he is a d-leaguer and he has a better shot then our other 2’s bell and price. So we obviously need help with our perimeter shooting but it’s not as big of a concern as our lack of mental toughness and defense. If you want the proof it is no surprise that our bench is around the bottom of the league in scoring…add that to having a shooting guard average 8 points for three fourths of the season starting. That is PATHETIC, and if you have no bench to back up your pathetic starter then things will go south when you face the better teams. I could go on and on but i think we should pick up cj’s contract for one more year because it is such a bargain, but if he doesnt show improvement next season then get him out of here! I think we should resign AK since he wants to play here, but for no more then 5 mil…and he should take a backup role if Hayward or C.j. improves or we draft a 3. Let Price, Fes, and Elson go! If minnesota is dumb enough to still trade us flynn for bell i say we do it in a heartbeat! Rumors also say they want to package wesley johnson so maybe we could work out a deal with bell and okur or a pick! either way bell needs to go unless he wants to retire and be a defensive coach…thats ok with me cause i like bell…just not his recent horrible shot.
Isn’t it funny that I totally called all of this back when we traded away our best player? I said the Jazz would be lucky to win 8 games after the all star break and I got lynched. A lot of you confidently told me how stupid I was, saying the Jazz would easily win 15 or more of their remaining games. Now the Jazz sit at 5-15 with a very likely chance of finishing 5-20, even worse than I predicted. The Jazz are just a bad team, and anyone with any sense saw this coming. We can only hope they make the right moves over the offseason
They were playing this badly long before d-will left and even before sloan resigned is when they were starting their awful defense and not closing out games
It’s all good. Hayward looked really comfortable last game and that’s a must for next year. I loved the pick-n-roll with him and Evans flushing it down. That’s a good sign of things to come. I really hope the Jazz don’t re-sign Miles, I don’t dislike him, I just think he doesn’t fit the chemistry of what the Jazz need. He plays ZERO defense. I doubt we’ll be able to move Okur, which is okay cause I think he’ll be eager to play next year and in good shape. Teams are doubling down more and more on Jefferson, so the Jazz have to find a spot up shooter and Jefferson HAS TO work on his interior passing. He’s done better but man, it’s ugly at times.
“They were playing this badly long before d-will left and even before sloan resigned is when they were starting their awful defense and not closing out games”
That’s the whole point… if they weren’t winning WITH Deron and Jerry, you would have to be a fool to think they could win more than a small handful of games without them
I just thought it was funny you said you called it when it was so easy to predict haha
With Deron and Jerry, I believed that we were going to pull ourselves together, make the playoffs, then have a great season next year. After D-Will got traded I lost all hope for this season and future seasons.
But to tacorev’s credit, corbzilla, half the people on the site loved the trade and thought we were going to make the playoffs. I wasn’t one of them, but they were there
Thanks Adam, and yes Corbzilla, it was easy to call but when a majority of the site disagreed with me and some even criticized me of being “negative” or “a drag”, among other things, then I think some “I told you so”s are in order
Half the people on this site also are in love with ronnie price when he is an emergency 2 and a poor 1, yeah he’ll hustle and get you a behind the back pass or a dunk in transition, but he overplays nearly every time on the defensive end and cannot run a team to save his life, but even worse is his outside shooting. A lot of people on this site think we should spend 9 mil to keep A.K. ha he is below his career numbers and farrrrr below the numbers when we once was an all star. I do have to give you credit for knowing what most jazz fans are in denial of, as long as we keep trusting players like Price, Fes, Elson, Bell, and even miles we will keep taking steps in the wrong direction. Yeah they are cheap and maybe even a value for how cheap they are, but if we didnt have ak’s and okurs huge contracts that take up all our cap space nobody would be satisfied with these players. You want players that are value between 6-13 million! not ones that are value at 1-3 million. As soon as Okur’s contract is up if we could just get one proven veteran wing who can shoot outside and play d we will be a solid 3-6 spot in the west again and we can work from there….the only question is will any of that caliber player come here and play? we have a bright future, but that really depends on who will come here and give us leadership, because right now we have none..
It’s not about winning anymore, although a win would be nice, but more geared toward maximum effort while we develop our young players for next year. The future of the franchise is now, raw/inexperienced… these guys require playing time to improve/gain confidence – they’re getting it.
As a side note… no NBA team could possibly entertain winning consistantly with the never ending injuries the Jazz have been plagued with this year. It’s just one of those nightmarish seasons teams experience from time to time in professional sports that was intensified by the resignation of a long term, hall of fame coach.
Enjoy the youth movement parade… watch the future get better – it’s really not so bad when you approach the game with this type of attitude ajustment. Hopefully, the increased playing time will translate into improved performance next year/more wins.
I still like the Deron trade. I said it will take a yr or two before we see the positive results. This year, there were too many injuries. Next yr, probably wont be a full season. So two yrs from now, remember that I told you that the trade was worth while.
Nothing good happens overnight. It takes time for things to grow.. Cant wait to remind you nay sayers about this two yrs from now.
The draft will have a huge influence on the future of this team. If we can get the right players, guys that can contribute very soon, that have the potential to be legitimate starters or at least big contributors within a year or two, then yeah we could be a playoff team within a few years. But if we screw it up, we could very well be a bottom feeder for a while.
And I don’t want to hear anything about injuries. All teams have injuries, just look at the Blazers. Every year they are plagued with injuries and they still make the playoffs. They had much more significant injuries than we’ve had and they’ll be playing this postseason and we won’t. Most of the players that have been missing significant time for the Jazz lately aren’t really very big difference makers anyway: Bell, Price, Okur, none of them have been good this year. AK… well he’s always injured so we can’t use him as an excuse. Injuries are definitely not one of the main reasons the Jazz have been losing. They have been losing because they aren’t a good team
What we lost when we traded Deron was leadership. We have a lot of good players, but having good players doesn’t do much when you don’t have the glue to hold them all together. You need a leader who knows how to win and will guide the team to greatness and currently we don’t have a player like that. Until we get one, we will be bad. Personally I think it will take a while for us to develop another player like that, especially because we have a coach that doesn’t know how to motivate his team to win either.
And yeah, I don’t buy the injuries excuse either. Every team has injuries and our injuries haven’t even been to any huge key player.
I don’t excuse injuries, but Deron’s wrist injury is one of the keys to the problem. Something that also took part in the decision to trade him.
That being said, leadership in basketball is at two levels:
- leadership in team’s spirit. You need players able to motivate themselves and the others, you need positive thoughts.
- leadership in the ball game. This role needs to be endorsed by the point guard.
As long as the Jazz will miss these two forms of leadership, the W’s will be less than the L’s.
Deron was leading but negatively… If Okur had been 100 percent this season, you cannot tell me that this season would not have been a much different team.. There was some of the 3 point shooting that we missed this season. A little more rest for our bigs..
AK, tell me he hasnt been a game changer, especially since Deron has been gone.. I dont disagree that we dont have depth, but injuries have plagued us. Are you telling me that Harris, would have been no help at all and his injuries didnt change the outcome of a few close games.. He did bring the leadership that we were lacking and in a positive way.. All 3 being veterans and leaders, all 3 being hurt has impacted our team. Those are just 3 players, the bigger impact players.
I cant say that it hasnt been good for them to be out of the playoffs and injured. We have gotten to see other players try and step up. They have gotten some of the development we needed. With the right picks, a healthy complete team next season, it will be a different look and a different ending to our season..
Deron was a vocal leader. He was straightforward and said things how they were. I respected that out of him. He wasn’t afraid to call someone out. And his leadership wasn’t negative, it was positive. He knew how to win. And if you say Devin Harris brought good leadership, that’s a lie. Devin Harris doesn’t know how to win. He just knows how to put up numbers.
As far as injuries go, AK has never played a full season in his career, so its a given that he will get injured. No excuse. Millsap was out for a few games and we lost those games. But we’ve lost with Millsap back, so that didn’t mean much. Like mentioned before, Devin Harris doesn’t know how to win. We lost several games with him in, so no, I don’t think he would’ve been much help. Ronnie Price was hurt for a while, but having a 3rd string point guard isn’t going to do much. So then we have Okur. If Memo was healthy all season, would we be better? Probably. But not enough to make a big enough difference to make us a playoff team with what has happened this season.
“Devin Harris doesn’t know how to win. He just knows how to put up numbers.”
I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say this: the exact same thing could be said about Jefferson. He’s had boat loads of HUGE games that have resulted in losses. I’m not saying he’s bad for this team. I just fear that a lot of the guys on our roster are used to losing, and dare I say, okay with it.
You can’t say injuries mean nothing, it’s the NBA if you don’t have your best players out there you are going to get beat with players the likes of bell,price, elson, fes. We are a bad team right now but if we had a season with AK and harris once he figures out the system. he isn’t going to be an all star of future of the team but he is a lot better scorer then watson. Even Okur at 70% is a lot better player then fes or elson. If AK stays healthy a whole year and plays like he wants to thats a boost on d and i never expect AK to hit a shot healthy or not so i wish he would stop shooting. The blazers have had their struggles yeah but they also have better players still and not the garbage ones we have. They traded away some of their problems and got a great player Gerald Wallace! Brandon Roy coming back along with that has really boosted that team. Oden is their really their only injury problem and he has not proven himself in this league anyways. our injuries are for proven guys who could help us. Yeah thats unfortunate for them with brandon roy but when he comes back they are a much more effective team so you can’t say injuries aren’t a problem. yeah every team has them but we have gotten really bad this year. We run 3 or 4 people deep on the bench a lot and that is with a d leaguer there. Okur wasn’t good this year because he came back too soon from his injury. He is only 32 and he was once one of the most durable jazz players there was i dont see why he can’t come back and be a solid reserve still. Most people think because of this injury he is injury prone and he is done but with a full year of rehab he could be fine.
adam, your right and we are wrong. Injuries are no excuse. We should win every game, with 3rd string players and rookies.. We should win every game with a new team that dont know each other or the system.. They all get paid millions and they should win every game. So who should lose?
Deron Williams is the only reason we won any games this year, he was the heart and soul of the team.. His positive leadership is what kept us winning until he was traded away. No one had better games once he left, they all tanked it..
Not really.. Sorry, still happy with the Williams trade.. Its too bad it will take until the end of next season to see the great results of the trade. But where would we be if Williams was here.
He is out for the season injured. No excuse. We wouldnt have Favors. We would only have one lottery pick instead of two. We would still be in about the same spot as we are now.. A hand full of injured players. The big difference would come at the end of next yr, when Deron left and we had nothing to show for it at all.
I’m also happy with the Deron Williams trade… we could have ended up with absolutely nothing like Orlando, Toronto/Cleveland in recent memory! Harris, Favors/two first rounds picks are significant assets for Deron Williams. The Jazz did what needed to be done/timely… I might add. Williams initiated this trade by not committing to a Jazz future. If someone wants to play the blame game, blame Williams… he’s the culprit here/ not Jazz management. Ownership nipped the Deron Williams drama right in the bud… it never had the legs necessary to play on broardway – good job Greg Miller/KOC.
Please, ludicrous commentary minimizing the significance of injuries that decimated our franchise this year is stunning in it’s ineptitude. Let me repeat this… no NBA team could have remained a consistent winner under these conditions – period, end of intelligent discussion.
This 2011 Draft is significant… we need to hit big.
The Deron trade makes us suck now, and probably next year. But I guarantee you the year after that, this trade makes all the difference. It’s the year we WOULD have tanked; the year when Deron would have bolted for elsewhere. Instead, we’ll have a 2-year developed Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward, and 2 1-year developed lottery picks (guys from this upcoming draft) and 1 new rookie (probably lottery pick from GS next year).
We’ll be 2-3 years ahead plus some of where we would have been had we kept trying to build around D-Will, with more financial flexiblity, and a much, much, better long-term outlook.
Don’t think of it as trading Deron. Think of it as trading away the 2nd-half of this already-looking-bad season and the 50-game lockout season we’ll have next year for 5+ years of awesomeness after that.
“Please, ludicrous commentary minimizing the significance of injuries that decimated our franchise this year is stunning in it’s ineptitude. Let me repeat this… no NBA team could have remained a consistent winner under these conditions – period, end of intelligent discussion.”
Tell this to the Portland Trailblazers. The past three seasons they have suffered far worse injuries to their roster and have made the playoffs all three years. This year they went a whole bunch of games without Brandon Roy, and he’s an all-star caliber player, unlike the scrubs on our team who have been injured. We’ve been missing Price and Bell, two players that even the more delusional Jazz fans have acknowledged should be let go or traded if possible, because they stink. Then there’s AK, who is always injured, so you can’t bring him up. Okur being out hurts us, but you all should have accepted months ago that he was done for this year and might not ever play again. Even if he would have played, he isn’t near enough to make a bad team good. Millsap missed a few games that we lost, but we’ve lost since he’s returned too, as Adam pointed out. And now Harris is out too, and he’s an ok player, but again, not enough to make a bad team good. Should I also bring up the games Fes and Elson missed to help you all pretend that injuries are the reason the Jazz stink?
@Corbzilla
I never said “injuries mean nothing”. They do mean something, and they hurt every team in one way or the other. But to try and say that injuries are the reason the Jazz aren’t good is nothing short of delusional, because any Jazz player you try to bring up as an example of the injuries that have “decimated our franchise this year” either isn’t good or isn’t good enough to make a bad team into a good one. There are several, much bigger reasons why the Jazz have been losing than injuries. The main reason is that they just aren’t a very good team
@KC
I hope you’re right, and you very well could be, but I have a hard time seeing how you can “guarantee” it. There are a lot of variables that will go into how this Jazz team turns out over the next few years, and what they do with their assets, mainly the lottery picks, will have a huge influence on how the Jazz future develops. This upcoming draft, for example, looks likes it might turn out to be better than originally speculated, which would be great for us with our two lottery picks, but if we pick two or even one player that turns out to be a bust, we’re in trouble. Hayward and Favors have both had stellar seasons developing as rookies, but what if something happens to them? That’s what I didn’t like about the Deron trade, it made us bad now with no guarantee of making us good later. On the flip side, not trading him meant we would have been mediocre now with no guarantee that he’d stick around later. So the Jazz were definitely in a pickle and I can hardly blame them for making the move, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was a fantastic move when there are several unknown variables that will go into place before we really know if it will turn out to be good or not
Ok, raise your hand if you honestly think that if we had all of our players healthy, then we’d be in the playoffs.
Now raise your hands again if you just lied.
Ok, don’t be silly, people. I never said injuries mean absolutely nothing. I’m not an idiot. I’m just saying that they haven’t been as bad as some people claim they’ve been. I hear some Jazz fans that pretty much think the Jazz would be undefeated and NBA champs if we had Memo, Ronnie Price, Devin Harris, and AK completely healthy. It’s a little absurd. Note to Jazz nation: We tanked and THEN got hurt, not the other way around. Our injuries were just like salt on the wound. They didn’t cause our troubles, they just made it sting a little more. We may have won a game or two more, but we’d still be a bad team with everyone back.
And about the future, I never really said that we have a bad future. I just said our present sucks because we traded away our team leader. We can be good again once we strike gold in either the draft or free agency. Once we find another team leader or have one of our current players step up and be the team leader then the rest of our role players will connect and we’ll do some damage. However, I do think we need to be careful in always saying that the Jazz have a bright future. If we focus too much on tomorrow, we will have a bunch of empty yesterdays. Live in the moment and focus on making our present bright and take things one step at a time. According to fans, after John and Karl left, the Jazz have always had a bright future. However, coincidentally, you look back on the past 10 years and those years have been horrible. Having a bright future is nice, I’m not trying to put that down, but I’d rather have a bright present. My whole life we’ve had a bright future and only few spots when I was young when our present was bright. I’m sorry I want that to change. Also when I look at the current bright future, it is a little cloudy as well because with our most recent past, when we do get players that step up, how do I know that they will want to stay with us? How do I know that the Jazz won’t trade players or let them walk in free agency once they start playing real well? This year would’ve been a killer year if we didn’t get rid of so many of our good players in the last few years.
TACOREV: “It’s just one of those nightmarish seasons teams experience from time to time in professional sports that was intensified by the resignation of a long term, hall of fame coach.”
You forgot to mention the above commentary in my earlier 7:44 p.m. post. I fail to see any evidence of a NBA basketball franchise this year that has experienced such emotionally draining upheaval/never ending turmoil that we have so clearly observed during the 2010-2011 Jazz season. A good way to put it: To add insult to never ending injuries… their revered, legendary, Hall of Fame Coach bailed out on them a week/so before the All-Star Break.
“Let me repeat this… no NBA team could have remained a consistent winner under these conditions – period, end of intelligent discussion.”
You’re partially right, bill. Few teams could deal with losing a hall of fame coach and their only all star player within the course of 2 weeks and perform well. But lots of teams have been able to deal with injuries. Fesenko, Bell, Price, AK, Harris, and Okur are all out with injuries for us tonight. That’s a lot at once, but none of them them are huge significant injuries. The first 3 are bench warmers, the last three are good bench players / average starters. Teams have played without their all star players and still done fine. It hurts, but not as bad as some say it does.
Bill I won’t argue with you on that point, regarding the loss of a hall of fame coach. In fact you are greatly supporting my argument and weakening your own. As I said before, there are several, much bigger reasons why the Jazz have been losing than injuries, and losing Jerry is definitely one of them. But that has NOTHING to do with the injuries of mediocre players that some people are blaming for the Jazz’s woes.
As for tonight’s game, we saw some great signs that definitely support KC’s guarantee. Hayward played like a man possessed and Favors was fantastic too. Let’s hope these two continue to develop in this manner, and that we can make some solid moves in the offseason to make this team a contender again as soon as possible
Adam, as you note, in addition to the loss of our Hall of Fame Coach/role players identified in your post, All-Star Deron Williams was traded to the NJ Nets while Memo Okur, a former All-Star, has been essentially missing in action for the entire season. Deron Wiliam’s very capable replacement Devin Harris, a former All-Star, is also physically unable to perform… which in my mind is a significant development. AK, a former All-Star, who is physically brittle at this point in his career, does contribute significantly when healthy… that’s the issue here – when healthy.
I wonder how good the Lakers would be without Phil Jackson, Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom/a cast of their role players? I don’t think the 2011 Jazz injury debacle can be minimized in any way. This, in addition to Jerry Sloan’s resignation delt a fatal blow to the team’s ability to perform/win consistently this season. Just my take.
Bill I don’t know why you are even mentioning Sloan’s resignation. Nobody’s arguing against it and it’s weakening what little argument you have. The fact that you put “former all-star” next to Okur and Ak makes it clear that you’re grasping for straws. They were both all-stars once and both happened several years ago. Then to top it off, you essentially compare Gasol, Bryant, and Odom to Harris, AK, Bell, and Price. Did you really keep a straight face when you made that comparison?
@Tacorev
Guranteeing it is easy. I’ll print you out a fancy guarantee certificate. Done.
@KC
Haha I look forward to getting it in the mail. I was mostly just wondering how you could be so certain when there is a lot of uncertainty with the draft, offseason, lockout, etc. Tonight was definitely a step in the right direction. I hope like hell the Jazz can do what’s necessary this summer and beyond in order to make your guarantee come to fruition
Wow. Did I really just read bill comparing Kobe, Gasol, and Odom to Okur, Harris, and Kirilenko? Wow. I think that conversation just ended. That was one ridiculous argument point there. Of course the Lakers would be horrible without those three. But Memo, AK, and Harris are nowhere near those three.
And by the way, I started this blog with “I hope I am wrong”. Wish granted. I am ecstatic that we just beat the Lakers in LA. No better feeling.
TACOREV, I mentioned Jerry Sloan’s resignation/never ending Jazz injuries because both are root causes for the
team debacle this year. I don’t know how the facts weaken my argument. Facts are indeed the facts; however,
ignoring the facts does weaken an argument. You then accuse me of “grasping for straws” because I recognized
“Okur and AK” as former All-Stars… huh, it’s a fact/ evidence of superior performance on the basketball court.
For your information, Devin Harris also fits rather nicely into this mold. The absurdites don’t stop here as I am faced with yet another accusation alleging that I
“essentially” compared elite Laker players to inferior Jazz players… heaven forbid! As you know, I made no reference to any such comparison. If you had been paying attention, maybe you would have recognized the
hypothetical LA Laker injury dilemma as the only similarity here/nothing more. Yes/No, I had no problem keeping a straight face until I read your manipulative/
fanciful rendition of what I said.
I’m with you on Tacos but that’s were the similarity ends.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the rest of the story.
Now hold on here, let’s be frank with ourselves. If you wanted your “hypothetical” to be taken seriously, you should have used players that were more comparable to the Jazz players that have been hurt. Anyone who reads that will think the same thing that both Adam and I thought. Had you said Luke Walton, Matt Barnes, Ron Artest, and Steve Blake you might have kept some credibility. But when you throw out 2 all-stars and one of the best 6th men in the league as your hypothetical injury dilemma in comparison to he Jazz’s “injury debacle”, nobody is going to take you seriously. And yes, Okur and Ak WERE all-stars SEVERAL YEARS AGO. They are definitely not all-star caliber now, and we can’t act like having them out with injuries now is similar to having two all-stars with injuries, which is what you’re trying to do.
Out of the 5 players the Jazz have missed due to injuries, 2 (Price & Bell) they are arguably better off without. AK misses time due to injuries every year, so that’s nothing new. Okur and Harris really are the only significant injuries, and that hardly constitutes an injury debacle. I don’t think you really believe the Jazz would be in the playoffs this year with Okur and Harris healthy. They would have won a few more games, no doubt, but they’d still be in the same boat. You believe what you want, but unless we want to be like the typical unrealistic homer sort of fan, we have to be able to detach our emotions so they don’t get in the way of logic
TACOREV, you still don’t get it. It’s not about player comparisons… an obvious, pull from the sky, tangent of opportunity, necessary to add substance to your argument, but injuries/negative affect.
Look, if you want to rant about superior, inferior/ mediocre players, knock yourself out. Let me repeat… never ending injuries, compounded by the trade of Deron Williams/loss of a legendary, Hall of Fame Coach, i.e., Jerry Sloan, were serious, unexpected, negatives that made it very difficult for the Jazz to win consistently this year… 2 + 2 should equal 4. To add more insult to injury, we just lost Fes for the year… enough said.
If you’re interested in good Tacos, let me now. It’s okay to agree to disagree. bill
Haha ok. Maybe I don’t get it. I’m not entirely sure even you get what you’re trying to say. I can’t think of another reason why you would name specific players if not to compare their hypothetical injuries to our players’ injuries, and in none of your retorts have you clarified that point.
Injuries aside, though, I agree with everything else, like the D-Will trade and losing Jerry were serious hits to our team this year. But I can’t be convinced that injuries were even close to as significant as either of those two things. So we can agree to agree about that other stuff, and agree to disagree about injuries
TACOREV, hey, like I said, I’m open to some great Tacos… let me know. And yes, I can agree to disagree. bill