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The Jazz actually played a basketball game last night!
Posted by: Joey Parker on December 20th, 2011
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.Well…sort of. They didn’t really play very well of course. But that’s OK. They hadn’t played in 8 months! And Enes Kanter? As we all know, he hadn’t played in a basketball game since he was 7 years old! So, we gotta be patient with this group.
There were good signs and bad signs in last night’s game. Just a reminder to myself and everyone else though: last night’s game was ONE GAME. Let’s not go all “irrational Jazzfan” on our players or team quite yet, whether in a positive or negative way. With that, here are my observations from last night’s game.
(Editor’s Note: The author watched the game on DVR from approximately midnight to 1:30am after attending a late-night showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas at Brewvies. Do with that information what you will.)
Observations:
- Enes Kanter looks more like a useable player than I thought he would. I attended the scrimmage the other night and Enes looked pretty lost (and I’m not just talking about his dance moves.) I figured we’d have to give him a month before he could even play more than 5-10 minutes in a game. He hasn’t played in an actual game in a long, long time, and he is only 19 years old. But, he surprised me. He is a relentless competitor. Goes after every rebound, not afraid to shoot, at least TRIES to play defense. His offensive moves even looked pretty good, although he needs to work on not getting his shot blocked so easily.
- Favors was exactly as advertised. On raw talent alone, Derrick Favors put up 25 and 12 almost EFFORTLESSLY! I don’t know how to explain it, but I can give a good example: when a guy like Al Jefferson puts up 25 points, it just FEELS like he had to kill himself (and use a ton of shot-clock) to get those points. Last night with Favors, it felt like his points were more within the flow of the game. Again, it’s ONE GAME, but klsdnflksdfkjstrhi vsndgfsngasgdhsnifg Oops, sorry, I just drooled on my keyboard and shorted it out.
- Favors needs to control the paint on D. The one thing Favors could do to REALLY help the Jazz get wins this year is to be a bigger presence on defense. Last night the entire team stunk it up on D, but I think Favors needs to be our defensive captain. He has the ability to be a Tyson-Chandler-type defender in the NBA. He showed some of that last year and I’m sure he will this year too.
- Who is our third point guard? I was very surprised that our candidates for the 3rd PG spot got ZERO minutes last night. Jamaal Tinsley, Keith McCloud, and Scottie Reynolds never even took their warmups off! I think Ty is using this ultra-short pre-season to get his team ready, rather than to decide on cuts, but I was still surprised by this development. I’m starting to wonder if the Jazz might actually use Alec Burks as our 3rd string PG, as people have guessed.
- Have Jefferson and Harris been told the lockout is over? They both looked like they were playing in a pre-season game or something! (Oh…right…they were.) I’m hoping they’re saving their A-games for the regular season.
- Defense and Turnovers are still the big keys. I guess this is true for all teams, but the Jazz were horrendous in both of those departments last season, so I hope Ty gets the guys to improve in those areas. If we can just play AVERAGE defense and commit an AVERAGE amount of turnovers, we will score enough to win some games.
- Jeremy Evans bears a STRIKING resemblance to Jack Skellington. All skinny arms and legs.
- Jazz may get off to slow start this year. For the past few seasons, the Jazz have been known for getting off to good starts at the beginning of the year. The problem has been that they start sliding after the All-Star break. I think this was due to the fact that we had a fairly established team and didn’t need a lot of time to gel. With this year’s team, I think the opposite will be true. I think the Jazz will get off to a slow start and then hopefully gel and make a good run near the end of the year. (The problem with this theory is that the Jazz schedule starts off relatively easy, and gets harder as the season goes along. So, we’ll see.)
I think this will be a very interesting season. Hopefully Jazz fans (including myself) will have patience with this team and give them a chance to grow before writing them off as a failure. We have the talent to be GREAT, but it will take some time.
Replies: 10
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10 Responses
Thank you for this post! Everybody needs to chill and stop jumping all over the players for last nights performance. It WAS only one game, and a preseason game at that (in a hostile environment). Plus, Corbin was experimenting with lineups all night long AND this team has basically ZERO game time together. As Mr. Miyagi once said, “patience, grasshopper.” Give this team some time to find it’s identity.
Oh, and good call on this team getting off to a slow start. I’ve actually felt all along this team would start off slow but find it’s stride near the allstar break. Expecting them to jump out of the gates and immediately rise to the top of their division is a little overzealous IMO.
Good Read.
So it seems like there are a lot of crappy Jazz fans that love to complain about Ty, Sloan, Devin….whoever or whatever to make themselves feel better about a preseason loss. Wow guys. c’mon.
The Jazz have never been in a better position to actually build a really good team that could be here for a while.
I loved watching Favors, but i’m still stoked to see Hayward tear it up this year. (Just because he didn’t last night doesn’t mean that he’s not ready or capable). I think once the players and fans take a chill pill everything will be just fine.
Go Jazz! Crazy excited to watch this season!
PS. Try not to write Big Al off to fast considering the Jazz probably would of had a similar record to the Cav’s last year if it wasn’t for him.
The schedule this year is heavily weighted with home games up front and heavy with road games at the end. IMHO if we can’t get it together early at home, the road is going to be really brutal. Young teams generally struggle on the road.
Lackadaisical sums us up from the beginning… The starters didn’t set the example for young core coming off the bench… Okur I’m hoping gets it together but should come off the bench. The thing with jazz and rookies? They traditionally don’t get minutes but should this season.. kanter and burks were energetic and at times sparked.. Favors 25 seemed effortless so let’s get that man in the starting lineup.
Can we run a pick and roll or a backdoor cut.. brewer and AK was great at that… Burks can slash but needs to use his body when finishing so he don’t get block as much.. miles will continue to start at the 3 and I see him being much more consistent.. he just needs to drive more which he has the ability to.
I was thinking the same thing about having a slow start. We are young, we have a new defense implemented, some new offensive plays and tweaks have just been integrated into the system, and we have a relatively new coach and new coaching staff. We’ll likely struggle at first, but finish the season a much better team. We might end up with a pretty bad record but I would bet that we finish the year playing at the level of a 5 or 6 seed.
It is really irritating to me that we came out not even trying. Yes, it is a preseason game, but we only have 2 preseason games this year! I really hope we don’t see lazy play once the regular season starts, if we do I hope Ty does the same thing again and throws all of the young guys in there. Our depth might be a factor in influencing our starters to hussle on both ends of the floor, although it certainly didn’t help last night…
@ Lance
If I remember right they had the same problem last year. The starters would give a less than stellar performance in the first quarter but the 2nd unit would bring us back.
The bench, at least early on last year, was what sparked us to many of our early victories. They would keep us in games until the end, then Deron would close it out. Who do we have that’s going to close out games for us this year? Jefferson maybe? I would say Howard if he was anywhere near what he was in Dallas, but that remains to be seen. I don’t see this team winning many close games though, at least until they find a closer.
I thinks these comments are right on. Portland’s experience was so evident and it will take the Jazz some time to be able to compete with like teams. The excitement comes with their raw talent and their depth of young talent. Remember it took Stockton and Malone years to win on the road. It’s going to take time with this team, but it is going to be fun to watch their growth. Patience and enjoy the journey.
Combinations are important, and so is position. Anyone tearing into Al is just silly. He is a Center (top 5 Center last season), and last season had Millsap or Favors on the floor taking attention away from him. Al and Okur on the floor together is not an ideal combo, especially when your taking Al out of his position.
Okur isn’t hitting shots and requires very little effort. He isn’t rebounding or defending. I think at present time he is the only absolute disappointment. He is back physically, but his play is still lost in the cobwebs. Once this preseason experiment is over, and our guys are back to their positions, most should snap back into last yrs form. With the new additions, we should be in for some very exciting games. We only dressed 9 players for many games last season. This season we are much deeper. It will work itself out.
I agree: Preseason games are for experimenting and getting players used to the real thing again. Wait for the first 3-5 games, then start to talk about where the team is going…