Meet
Defense should be a higher priority than it has been.
Posted by: Ryan Tegtmeier on October 3rd, 2012
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.The Jazz will have to work harder on their defense than in year’s past if they are going to beat title contenders such as the Lakers and Heat. With all the money that is spent by the bigger markets the Jazz will need to counter it by making defense a higher priority than it has, simply because the NBA is dominated by excellent offensive players. It’s almost like they need to practice defense in preparation to playing the Lakers and the Heat exclusively. In doing so, they should be able to beat just about any team in a 7 game series. If the Jazz can slow down the Lakers and Heat’s offense, the Jazz’s offense should be adequate to beat those two teams, and naturally everyone else. We really need to put a cap on how much each team gets to spend on their team. Ever since the Celtics acquired the Big 3, 5 years ago or so, the NBA has become an NBA of who has the most money wins the championships. It’s not supposed to be about who has the most money. An organization should not be permitted to buy their way to winning the Finals. It’s supposed to be about heart and courage and teamwork. The last I heard, just about any team in the league could beat any team on a given night, except for maybe the Bobcats (sorry). So the talent is spread fairly well for the most part. But with the Heat and Lakers making these moves, well, I would be interested to see how much over the cap they are this year. All of a sudden you have an unwritten rule that you must go over the cap to be considered as a title contender. I know that all of this is apparent, but something has to be done about it. More and more teams are stock-piling players just because they can.
Replies: 6
Views: 486
6 Responses
I meant stock-piling elite echelon players.
The Detroit Pistons were the only no-super-star team to win the title in my lifetime. As much as I hated watching their games, it is the only way the Jazz get a title without a super-star.
For the most part, spending more money = more wins. At least now there are steeper penalties that fully kick in next year…right in time for the Jazz to scoop up discounted talent with their loads of cap space. Still, it might ease things financially for small market teams, making them more viable. BUT, you know what they still give up to make that extra money from tax-paying teams? Wins. Their financial situation now improves with the new tax rules, but they’ll still have inferior teams to ones that choose to pay more for more talent. Still, if you’re a terrible owner and don’t understand anything (James Dolan) like how to hire good basketball minds and make good basketball decisions, paying more money for talent isn’t everything.
Defense is the only way we beat the current teams in the NBA. One of the main reasons that I want to trade certain people
@KC – even with the profit sharing, as I would call it, the Jazz would have a hard time beating the “super teams”. but, yeah I agree with all of what you are saying there.
It’s probably easier to develop team defense than offense when you have a fair number of new players to integrate. Offense seems to always take longer to develop. Thus, build a strong defense for easy offense until more complex offensive system can be installed.