Meet
Potential Jazz Weaknesses
Posted by: Kyle Hanson on October 25th, 2010
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.This team has a lot of strengths but I wanted to point out what I think are a few of the potential weaknesses. What do you think (other than injuries) could keep the Jazz from being a championship contender?
- Outside Shooting. With Memo out until at least December, the Jazz don’t have a consistent outside threat. Raja Bell can score from the outside, but he is a defensive first player. Can he carry the outside shooting load for the starting line up while guarding the other teams best player? CJ can stroke it at times but has to be more consistent. Gordan Hayward also struggles with consistency. He only shot 29% from the college three point line last year. Kyle Korver isn’t here anymore and someone is going to have to step up to stretch the floor at least until Memo comes back.
- Interior Defense. Al Jefferson’s size is part of the reason he is a big improvement over Boozer on the defensive end of the court, but he needs to play great defense for the Jazz to be a contender. Fes can make a huge impact on the defensive end, but can he stay out of foul trouble and knock down free throws often enough to stay in the game? Millsap always provides great effort, but he is undersized no matter how you slice it. Elson and Evans are both pretty skinny. Can they be counted on to help stop Odom, Bynum and Gasol?
- Back up PG. Can Watson learn the offense quickly enough to be a solid backup? Price brings a lot of energy, but based on past experience I don’t think he is consistent enough to be a quality backup. Deron can’t play the whole game and somebody needs to get the Jazz to run their offense with a lot of new players to the system.
- Rookies. Gordon Hayward is going to have to produce at small forward for the Jazz. Andrei Kirilenko isn’t getting any younger and plays with a lot of energy so asking him to play more than 35 minutes seems like a stretch. He needs someone who can play well behind him. Can Gordon Hayward make enough shots, especially coming off screens? Can he play quality defense? Evans is very athletic and exciting, but a featherweight. The NBA season is much longer than college. Will his body hold up and can he play against bigger NBA power forwards?
- The bench. Is there anyone outside the starting line up that can provide consistent scoring? With Millsap and Kirilenko starting, who can get it done off the bench? CJ Miles has been streaky at best. He has the talent but can he do it night in and night out all season long? Is the bench good enough to provide a spark in the 2nd game of a back to back set?
This team, in my opinion, will be at least as good as last years but can they be better? I can’t wait til Wednesday to start finding out the answers!
Replies: 8
Views: 538
* * * * 1 Votes
8 Responses
I see no weaknesses.
No, I’m kidding.
Here’s the deal: The Jazz got better defensively, but worse offensively.
The good news: The offense will improve over the course of this season. Mostly the new guys finding the groove together and rookies calming down and playing.
The bad news: We might drop some games while we work to find that groove and gel as a team.
I think this team’s ceiling is higher than our team with Boozer/Korver/Brewer/Koufos. And that’s really what I’m excited about. This year is going to be fun, but I think the future years are even more promising.
Outside shooting: CJ does have trouble with consistancy but when he’s hot there is no stoping him. Raja… I dont get what you mean. He is a defence first but isnt that on the other end of the floor? On the offencive end… look out. With CJ, Raja,Gordon, even Deron our outside shooting percentage:around 36 percent. Not to shabby.
Al Jefferson on his career has 1.2 block shots per game. Elson is solid on D. Fes is just a big body. So that should set us on that.
I’m sure Watson will be great HIM OR PRICE! Thats the question.
Gordon will be good backing up Raja while CJ backs up AK. I dont see Evens getting big minutes.
Bench will be amazing! When Memo comes back you get Paul off the bench. Plus with the high energy of Price and CJ. We do have the best bench in the league.
Outside shooting- We lost Korver and Wes. Brought in Hayword and Bell. Bell is 41% from downtown, CJ should should much better this year since he’s in his groove already (not injured like last year) and Dwill, well he’ll pick it up for sure.
Interior Defense- Much better than last year, Fes has imporved GREATLY, Al showed us three times against Pau Gasol why he is a better Defender than Loozer. And Elson is not what I’d call skinny, not that he’s huge, but he brings a great intensity to the floor. Last year I would rank the jazz 6/10 for interior defense. This year 7.7/10.
Back up PG. Only problem here is who gets the start. I pick Watson, he has around 260 started games, good defender, gritty and tough, and can run an offense better than price. However price will be better in some games when he brings his “spark” to the table.
Rookies. I agree with you here. The issue when we say we replaced some of our lost players with evans and hayword is that evans and hayword are rookie. How they fit into our rotation is key to how well the Jazz will do. Evans won’t be competing very much against PF’s however, not until he gains some weight.
Bench…is a question mark, nice to see cj pick it up last few games, I really hope he becomes our main option of bench for scoring and 3rd or 4th in scoring. When memo comes back we have plenty of bigs coming off bench with memo (not paul) fes, elson, and even evans. We don’t have very much depth at the SG on the bench though, which will probably put Price at the SG and PG with watson main PG back up
This was a nice post. Thanks for having the courage to point out that the Jazz are not quite perfect yet. There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about this team and we have had numerous posts about their upside. But they have yet to play a “real” game, where all the starters on the other team play their usual minutes. I believe the team impoved in many areas, but they have only played five teams in preseason, and not anyone from the east. The biggest problem I see with unbridled optimism without looking at reality is that when things go wrong(the Jazz will lose a game eventually)it is a long fall down. I am sure there are some football fans in the state that can attest to that.
I really wish I could promise that the JAzz are headed to the NBA finals, with not a bit of doubt and I envy those of you that can. I on the other hand would like to see how the Jazz play together for a few months and how their bodies hold up, if I am not mistaken there were several injuries in the preseason and some players either out of games because of injuries or questionable for some games.
Just trying to keep it real here.
Thanks Deb. I am very optimistic about this season, but I also like to try and be objective and realistic.
I have to agree with KC. I too think the ceiling is higher for this team and I think that is what makes us all so excited for the season to get underway tomorrow.
Kelton what I was trying to say about Raja is that he is 34 and will probably be playing defense against the other teams best player. I’m not sure how many quality minutes he can play and I wonder about how many points we should expect him to score. At 3 million a season if he can play good defense and hit three pointers at a 40% clip KOC got a steal.
Mostly with our outside shooting I worry about the fact that last season Deron could find Okur, CJ, or Wes (all in the starting line up) on the perimeter and count on them to knock down shots. This year Deron only has Raja in the starting line up that can be counted on to knock down jumpers. Unless Hornacek has worked a miracle with AK I worry about Deron being able to find people who can knock it down.
All signs, disturbingly, point to Hayward not being able to shoot. If he can’t shoot the basketball, he’s not going to make it. He’ll never be big enough to bang at the 4, nor will he be quick enough to score without being able to knock down the perimeter shot consistently. The fact that we are penciling him in for minutes at the 3 this year worries me. This goes to the larger concern about Utah’s overall ability to shoot from the outside which, as you pointed out, Kyle, is a significant concern.
Im sorry sir, i think your wrong about bell. Did u watch the last couple of years with phoenix? He was a shooting beast. It helped that he had nash to get him in the right spots, but he has upgraded at the point, so those same shots if not better ones will come. Bell is a threat from outside.
@KCJones, There is no way we got worse offensively. Korver is a great shooter but if u cant do it on a consistent basis, why not upgrade all around. He is supposed to be a ray allen type shooter, turned out to be a JR Smith. Reguardless of his record he set, it was to inconsistent. And dont get me started on soft as a nail so imma shoot jumpers carlos loozer. I will take misap at the same number of minutes anyday. Besides we got a beast in jefferson, a real low post threat, until he developes a jumper. Hopefully he wont go boozer n cwebb soft. I think we are better offensively, and defensively. Imho