Boozer had a nice game (as he should against a team that features David Lee/Wilson Chandler) and Kirilenko's 3-point shooting carried us in the second half (let that sentence sink in). So those are good things. Hopefully they continue.
The negative development, from the Jazz' viewpoint, is the massive amount of zone that the Knicks threw at them. It took a basketball genius like Paul Westphal to realize that it makes sense to zone a team with no shooters, but now that the Kings' coach has let the cat out of the bag, the Jazz can expect to see a LOT of zone until we prove that we can beat it. Can we?
4 comments:
leave it to Crotty Kid to be the optimist!? (generally, he is the most cynical person i know, and he is a quitter).
If AK -- or anyone on the Jazz, for that matter -- hits five threes the next time we see a zone, we will be OK. If not, we are back to square one. You be the judge of what's more likely to happen.
And let us not forget the defensive end. Opposing teams shoot 42% from beyond the arc against us! That is 3rd worst in the league after Toronto and Memphis. Yuck.
Honestly, I think most of our struggles this year are offensive, not defensive. All the "New Focus" talk notwithstanding, this has always been a terrible defensive team. But we've been able to hide that because Deron/Boozer/Okur have been able to carry us offensively.
This year, Boozer looks like he doesn't have the legs, and Okur is still working off the summer 15. And Millsap, well, let's just say that $10 million seems a little pricey right now.
Perhaps, but -- and this is what Jerry keeps correctly pointing out -- we can improve our defense much more easily than our offense.
Offense is probably 70% skill, defense is probably 70% mental. Don't reach, don't foul, stay in front of your guy (which means if you're Boozer, for hell's sake gap the guy a little when he's 25 feet away from the hoop), rotate when your teammate gets beat, don't gamble every time down the floor (an AK specialty) and get a hand up on shooters. That's about it.
From what I can tell, we don't perform any of those tasks particularly well, but there's no reason we can't.
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