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[QUOTE]guarding the basketball is something the Jazz did not do a few weeks ago when Orlando defeated Utah at EnergySolutions Arena. [/QUOTE]
nor most of the year
[QUOTE]The lack of defense allowed the Magic to live in the lane almost at will, and kick out for wide open 3-pointers in one of the more disappointing losses of the season for the Jazz.
On Friday night, Utah held Orlando to 44.6 percent shooting. When Orlando won earlier this month, it shot over 50 percent.
"Sometimes, it can
[QUOTE] the two best Utah Jazz players pushed their team ever closer to a winning streak.[/QUOTE]
The two highest paid anyway. Rudy's the best and Kanter certainly has an argument over Favors. despite the hype to the contrary.
[QUOTE] Three minutes away from finishing off a 101-94 conquest at the Amway Center, Favors splashed home a 15-footer. He smirked slightly when Magic coach Jacque Vaughn disgustedly called another timeout.
This was fun. Fun for Favors. Fun for the Jazz.
"A year ago, I probably wouldn
[QUOTE]if you ask Enes Kanter, he may tell you he wants to stay out here indefinitely.[/QUOTE]
He may get that wish. He will be getting paid a lot of money by someone this summer.
[QUOTE]The young Jazz big man has been a revelation this week, twisting and turning, scoring on whomever he wants and playing better defense.
He set his career-high on Tuesday night with 29 against the New Orleans Pelicans. He scored 18 important points against the Miami Heat a night later. He hit a corner 3-pointer in the fourth quarter of that game, a shot that proved gargantuan. He
[QUOTE]Rudy Gobert stole an inbounds pass in the first half against Miami, took a few dribbles toward midcourt, and saw nothing but open space and one defender.
What happened next, as the cool kids say, about broke the Internet on Wednesday night and has been a topic of conversation around Jazzland ever since.[/QUOTE]
Hard to believe his dominating play wouldn't be the topic of conversation but oh well. :confusedshrug:
[QUOTE]Gobert, acting like a 7-foot-1 version of point guard Tony Parker, pushed the ball down the court, deftly maneuvered around Heat center Udonis Haslem into the lane with a huge step to the left, and then gently flipped the ball into the hoop with a George Gervin-like finger roll.
[QUOTE]the talented Utah roster is really coming along. [/QUOTE]
:rolleyes:
[QUOTE]It has put together a nice string of solid performances, even in some recent losses. There is a building confidence as the squad is starting to gradually realize the immense potential it possesses. [/QUOTE]
Remains to be seen how much potential they have.
[QUOTE]There is evident buy-in to Snyder
[QUOTE]David Locke: According to Quin Snyder, Enes Kanter has been a big part of the defensive improvement Twitter @Lockedonsports [/QUOTE]
:eek:
[QUOTE]Only Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward have ever played significant roles on teams that were playing 4 games in 5 nights. Last year, we never played 4 games in 5 nights. So even Hayward and Favors have never carried this big a burden in a 4 games of 5 nights.[/QUOTE]
Really that's hard to believe? Don't they always have those? Kanters been in the rotation his whole career and Burks for much of his so it depends on what you consider significant. As we've seen this year with their weak bench being part of a rotation is significant.
[QUOTE]This team was searching all night. They couldn’t find a rhythm or a momentum in the game. At some point in one these nights you have to get a momentum as a group to find a way to fight through the fatigue.[/QUOTE]
And at some point the coach has to try something else. Gobert was fighting through it. Go with Evans and Clark? They're fresh.
[QUOTE]Enes Kanter,Alec Burks and Trey Burke both had poor games. [/QUOTE]
Typical game from Burke so hard to call it poor.
[QUOTE]From a shooting standpoint as they do this a few more times they will figure out how to turn a 2 for 9 into a 3 for 7. That becomes a really big difference. You can feel you legs are dead and you have no explosion. So you end up settling for the first open jumper you get but because your legs are dead you end up front riming all of those shots.
Al Jefferson caught the ball with a foot in the paint on every touch early and Favors was dead from the start. Jefferson got him on pump fakes, weezies and everything that big Al does[/QUOTE]
So that's why Favors didn't come back in the game in the 4th? :confusedshrug:
[QUOTE]Rudy Gobert was the highlight of the night. [/QUOTE]
as he is pretty much every night. Time to build around him. It should be obvious to anyone watching that he is the man. They finally have a direction to take this team.
[QUOTE]He had his first double double of his career. In the 2nd quarter he was dominant. He impacted shots, grabbed rebound and even began to make some plays on the offensive end. A GM once told me when evaluating players look for dominant plays then they can play in the league. Then look for dominant sequences, then they can impact the game. Then look for dominant quarters, then they can start to determine who wins game. Then look for dominant games, weeks and months and then you have a player you can use as a core piece of your franchise. Rudy is dominating sequences and getting close to quarters. He will dominate games and weeks. He is going to be a core piece of a great defensive team.[/QUOTE]
He already is Locks. Wake up! You're the stat man. They tell the story if you can't see what's going on in front of you. Rudy was dragging at times in this game too but he kept working and grinding and making plays despite that. He's a lot of fun to watch. Gives me some hope for the future whenever they decide that is.
[QUOTE]Alec Burks played his 23rd game of 30 or more minutes tonight – he had only played 36 games of 30 minutes in his career prior to this season.
Joe Ingles got it going and had 13[/QUOTE]
Yeah he was the other guy that did something.
[QUOTE]Jazz battled back to within 10 but never were able to get past that.
New experience and the Jazz didn’t deal with it very well. Let’s see if they deal with the next 4 games in 5 nights better than this one.
Posted in Emptying the Noggin[/QUOTE]
Memphis will be ugly unless Rudy gets significant minutes just like every other game.
[QUOTE]The team looked lethargic all night long, leading to them settling for a multitude of outside jump shots offensively and a dearth of bona fide stops on the defensive end. [/QUOTE]
They haven't made stops regardless.
[QUOTE]With a few exceptions, the only thing that stopped the Hornets from getting to the rim and/or scoring was a missed shot, not an outstanding defensive play by a member of the Utah roster. Enes Kanter particularly seemed to have no legs, as nearly every one of his 6 misses on the night caught front iron.[/QUOTE]
Rudy?
[QUOTE]Trey Burke
[QUOTE]"Our start hurt us," Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. "We let Al Jefferson catch the ball way too deep. They had a couple of easy buckets early and it made us even more tired."[/QUOTE]
and if Rudy starts this doesn't happen.
[QUOTE]It was Utah's fourth game in five nights
[QUOTE]If you want a reason for the Jazz falling to Charlotte on Saturday night - a technical reason - look no further than the way the Hornets played pick-and-roll defense.[/QUOTE]
I'll continue to blame it on Rudy not starting and playing as much as necessary.
[QUOTE]Charlotte went under almost every screen, a tactic that kept Utah out of the lane, but also gave the Jazz plenty of open jumpers from 18-20 feet.
Not only is that a bit unconventional, it surprised the Jazz, especially their guards. It was an adjustment that Utah was never able to deal with.
"We missed a lot of open jumpers," Jazz point guard Trey Burke said. "On paper, those are good shots, and they are open shots. But it kind of lulls you to sleep and keeps you from being aggressive. It hurt us tonight."[/QUOTE]
They're good shots if you can shoot. If I'm the other team I'm making you beat me from the perimeter no doubt.
[QUOTE]That, combined with the Jazz being a tired team, kept those jumpers clanging off the rim. The Jazz weren
[QUOTE]Around NBA circles, they call this a scheduling loss.[/QUOTE]
I call it tanking. If you had a roster of NBA ready players who knows? The teams from 2 or 3 years ago had the depth to compete nightly no matter what. This team just doesn't have enough players that should be playing at this level.
[QUOTE]Utah
[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Tony Jones: Jazz forward Trevor Booker underwent a minor procedure today. Won't play tomorrow night, but is not expected to miss any more time Twitter @Tjonessltrib [/QUOTE]
Rudy!
[QUOTE] If someone got it up and over Rudy, it was a blood feud. This is something that has carried over since that pre-draft evaluation where he played on one foot, it’s really something that he is as a basketball player. A competitor. An athlete. A stand out talent that only the best teams were lucky to have.
A few weeks later, on draft night, he was picked by the Denver Nuggets – a team that knows a thing or two about defensive stalwarts (think: Dikembe Mutombo, Marcus Camby) – but somehow parted with him for a beggar’s ransom of cash and a second round pick (Erick Green). It wasn’t their best move of the season. But in the long run it could be one of the best moves in Utah Jazz history.[/QUOTE]
These deals are generally already made. They drafted him for the Jazz. It was already known before the draft that Denver wanted to sell the pick. As I've said it's probably the biggest steal since Stockton and Malone. Hopefully they don't take as long to realize he's the man as it did with John.
[QUOTE]Now, I don’t mean to say bad things about Erick Green, but I will say great things about Rudy Gobert. The first is that, clearly, he is head and shoulders above any peers he may have. At first I was trying to see how he was as a player compared to the likes of Mark Eaton, Greg Ostertag, Thurl Bailey, Truck Robinson, Rich Kelley, Olden Polynice, Felton Spencer, and so forth. [/QUOTE]
:roll:
[QUOTE]But for what Gobert has shown he is capable of at this age I had to look beyond our Jazzy borders, into the land of the giants. (For what it is worth, Gobert is 4 blocks off of tying Jarron Collins’ production at the 5 spot in a Jazz jersey, in 407 more games.)[/QUOTE]
It's not worth anything. Tag and Eaton are the only guys you can really compare him with there.
[QUOTE]Right now, for Gobert’s career he has played fewer than 1,000 minutes in 73 games. His average if 12.9 mpg, his first season he was sacrificed to the God Vetzzzalcoatl. Well, not really, but it’s not like his former coach knew how to get him on the floor. (That type of coaching creativity doesn’t make me feel like he’s much of a Jazz conductor.) His last coach got Rudy into only 54% of the games his team played last season in a 25 win year; and only at 9.6 mpg.[/QUOTE]
He wasn't ready offensively. He may have been by the end of the year if they'd had him down in the D-league most of the year like they should have.
[QUOTE]Rudy is seeing more and more floor time this season, a little over 18 mpg. But for a guy like Rudy, it’s what he does when he’s on the floor that matters. (Aside: which is funny why there was a narrative to suggest that he improved over the off-season; rather, it was more like he was always good, and people needed to construct a way to defend a coach who was always defended by the media.) In some ways, Gobert was even more of an animal on defense last season than he is this season.
Last season Rudy grabbed 28.5% of all the available defensive rebounds when he was on the floor, this season it’s only 23.9%. His block percentage did rise from 7.4% to 7.6% from his rookie year to this year. But plainly the point here is that he was THIS good last year too. So let’s look at the numbers of other good bigmen.[/QUOTE]
Again you need to watch the games and get your head away from your computer screen. He wasn't good enough at the other end last year. He still has some issues this year as well at the other end.
[QUOTE]Over his entire NBA career Gobert has a REB% of 20.0 and BLK% of 7.5. Where does this stand against other bigs? Here we have a chart showing bigs who have at LEAST had seasons of 15% in REB and 6% in BLK – and then going higher each step of the way until you see how rare it is to have a player like Rudy. (The number is the number of seasons where the player had the advanced stat minimums)
Player REB 15%, BLK 6%, 400 min REB 16%, BLK 6%, 400 min REB 17%, BLK 6%, 400 min REB 17%, BLK 7%, 400 min REB 18%, BLK 7%, 400 min REB 19%, BLK 7%, 400 min REB 20%, BLK 7%, 400 min REB 20%, BLK 7.5%
1 Marcus Camby 6 5 5 3 3 2 2 0
2 Rudy Gobert 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1
3 Greg Oden 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
4 Greg Ostertag 8 7 5 5 3 1 0 0
5 Dikembe Mutombo 7 7 6 3 3 1 0 0
6 Hakeem Olajuwon 4 4 4 1 1 1 0 0
7 Amir Johnson 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
8 Larry Sanders 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
9 Chris Andersen 6 6 4 2 0 0 0 0
10 David Robinson 4 4 4 1 0 0 0 0
11 Alonzo Mourning 5 4 1 1 0 0 0 0
12 Shawn Bradley 6 3 1 1 0 0 0 0
13 Mark Eaton 3 2 1 1 0 0 0 0
14 Eddie Griffin 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
15 Tree Rollins 6 4 2 0 0 0 0 0
16 Samuel Dalembert 3 3 2 0 0 0 0 0
17 Andrew Bogut 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0
18 Ben Wallace 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0
19 DeAndre Jordan 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0
20 Joel Przybilla 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0
21 JaVale McGee 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0
22 Wayne Cooper 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0
23 Andre Drummond 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
24 Andris Biedrins 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
25 Bismack Biyombo 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
26 Jawann Oldham 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
27 Jermaine O'Neal 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
28 Kendrick Perkins 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
29 Tim Duncan 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
30 Anthony Davis 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
31 Harvey Catchings 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
32 George Johnson 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
33 Bill Walton 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
34 Serge Ibaka 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
35 Alton Lister 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
36 Ervin Johnson 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
37 Hasheem Thabeet 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
38 Jerome James 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
39 Michael Stewart 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
40 Roy Hibbert 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
41 Tyrus Thomas 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
42 Bernard James 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
43 Calvin Booth 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
44 Charles Jones 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
45 Dan Gadzuric 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
46 Kelvin Cato 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
47 Patrick Ewing 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
48 Ronny Turiaf 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
What this tells me is that if you look at what a defensive bigman can do, block shots and get rebounds, Gobert is really in good company. And that last column, for 20% REB and 7.5 BLK is Gobert's CAREER numbers. If you add this this his age, and inexperience (some of the guys on that list had big seasons 5 years removed from their rookie years), you see that Gobert has both performance and potential going for him.
Gobert is amazing. And he's young. And he was this good last season. So why is he only playing 18 mpg? Sadly, Gobert's time on the floor may not be determined by him, but by those around him. Derrick Favors is amazing when he gets the ball; but he really an inside only player.[/QUOTE]
Except for all those FT line jumpers and now baseline jumpers he's making. :coleman:
[QUOTE]Enes Kanter has more of an inside/outside game, but even he cannot get on the floor for more than 27 mpg. Even if you scuttle Jeremy Evans, Steve Novak, and Trevor Booker only then can you hope to give the three young bigs the time that SOME of us may want.[/QUOTE]
There's no excuse for it now. He is the man. You got to go with a 3 man big man rotation until you decide on Favors or Kanter next to him. That's 32 minutes a player and only Favors is getting that now so there's plenty of minutes as much as Booker deserves to be playing. If you decide on Favors before the trade deadline you can make a move though in reality you could keep all 3 at least until Rudy becomes a max player and even than with the increasing cap you might be able to keep all 3. Biggest question is keeping one of the happy coming off the be bench. Things could get even more complicated after the draft.
[QUOTE]But the good news is that beyond being a peer of some of the best ever defensive bigs, he is also someone who is more and more a two-way player who will get on the floor more.
We're just greedy because we can see what he does now, and want him to get on the floor asap.
His time will come, and a lot sooner than the time for our other 1st rounders in recent history. And I think we all can agree that is good news. There is no conclusion because there are three crying kids and someone foolishly put me in charge. I don't see how anyone with kids can blog . . . hats off to you parent-bloggers.[/QUOTE]