30 to 16 to 1:(Pt. 9 Rnd2): The Forgettable Jazz

The Basics:

30 to 16 to 1. Based on a half baked notion, that since the true goal of any NBA season is to turn thirty teams into one champion and as we saw in my earlier piece, what wins in the regular season is not necessarily what  gets you the trophy, my 2010 Playoff Review series continues.

The Half-Baked Notion:

Simple (based on 2010 numbers):

• The best two players accounted for 55% of a teams wins in the 2010 Playoffs.
• The top three players are just below the pareto threshold
• The next three (4,5,6th man) account for the rest of the positive win contribution about equally.
• After that everybody else actually hurt teams in the playoffs.

The format will look at the best six players in the playoffs for each team, will look at how many wins their coach/injuries might have cost them and talk about their opportunities/drawbacks going forward (and if they’ve done anything in the off-season to address these). We will go from least productive to most productive team in the Playoff (based on the table that follows now):

This piece covers the next of the 2nd Round Losers: the Players formerly know as the Utah Jazz.

Forgettable Jazz

A series premise that allows the hero(es) (or villains) to win minor battles along the way but prevents them from ever truly winning their overall “war” and achieving the Series Goal  without ending or completely changing the series – TV Tropes entry for Failure is the only Option

• The Storyline: The Utah Jazz very predictably made the Playoffs. They very predictably and for the fourth straight year were eliminated by the team with better size and physicality( Spurs then the Lakers 3 straight times) that to my recollection rebounded them out of a series (I’m to bored to look it up). The series were not really that close. Injuries to Okhur and Kirilenko left them severely undermanned but frankly, this was a very predictable outcome.
• The Good: Williams, Boozer and Millsap played well. Millsap and Boozer are to be commended for doing so amongst the Land of the Giants in LA.
• The Bad: Everyone else would have been better off staying home.
• The Coach: Sloan did his typical good job. He got his team to beat a dysfunctional Nuggets team that was only better on paper but LA and their size was too much to overcome for his depleted team.
• Needs: Size. Size. Did I say size yet?
• Major Moves: Fans of the Jazz were heartbroken when their team picked up stakes in the night and moved to Chicago. Actually, that was just most of their players. Boozer, Korver, Matthews and their 21 wins in 2010 are gone. In their place is Al Jefferson and his 7.5 wins. Not good times at the Tabernacle choir.

• 2011 Outlook: One of the west powers is posed for a fall and the Jazz look to be it. This version of the Jazz has really never had the rebounding presence & size required to win. Their ownership is simply not willing to splurge. You have to respect that and their success and  I trust Sloan to keep them over .500 but it will be a struggle. They are a well run small market franchise. They have not had the good fortune of having a big man fall into their lap to push them to that next level and regression to the mean seems to be in order. This team will get to make early plans next summer.