Living in Minneapolis and without access to a private jet regulates me to either watching the NBA on TV or going to the Target Center and checking out a Timberwolves team that is one of only 6 NBA teams with a losing record at home. Since I don’t really care about the Timberwolves, I go to the game to watch the other teams like the Jazz on March 11th and the Bulls on March 30th. It was shocking to see the difference between the Bulls and the Jazz as viewed through the prism of playing against the Timberwolves.

The Jazz looked completely lost on defense and only slightly better on offense. The Bulls on the other hand looked like a well-oiled machine, where each player knew their role and the offense was designed around making the extra pass and getting an open shot. While watching the Bulls play I didn’t really care who won and was just going to see a good team, but suddenly I became a little melancholy. Why? I realized that the brand of basketball the Bulls were playing looked exactly like the old Jazz teams.

42% of the Chicago Bulls minutes have been allocated to Derrick Rose, Carlos Boozer, Ronnie Brewer and Kyle Korver. I decided to see how the minute allocation would compare with the past three Jazz seasons with the one substitution being Derrick Rose for Deron Williams. Below is that comparison:

The Bulls are following the same strategy as the Jazz used by playing an All-Star point guard with the same exact 3 players approximately the same amount of minutes. They have taken the baton and are now doing better than the Jazz ever did. What is frustrating is that the Jazz were so close to having the team the Bulls have right now, which means the Jazz were that close to being a championship level team. If they could have improved their bench (Taj Gibson, Omer Asik and even C.J. Watson would be an improvement over the Jazz bench options) and hoped that Williams would make a Rose like leap then the Jazz in the famous words of Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront “could have been a contender.”

The Jazz have now taken a few steps back and are now somewhere between a team that is rebuilding around the current players and a team that is about ready to be blown apart. The Jazz can watch the Bulls in the playoffs and reminisce about the time when they had a star point guard, a well-respected coach, a 42% three-point shooter and an above-average shooting guard option that is in the discussion for the all-defensive team. Good luck in the playoffs, the Chicago Jazz. Read more »

In Jeremy Evans last game in college he played 33 minutes and scored 6 points in a 54-48 loss against Troy. That performance wasn’t very far off from his average since he only scored 10 points per game for the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. Leaving that game, I wonder if Evans thought if maybe that was the last time he was going to play basketball. Certainly playing overseas would be an option for a 6-9 forward with his athleticism, but if we was looking at any mock drafts or NBA draft previews he probably came to the realization that the NBA wasn’t in his immediate future.

However, the Jazz drafted him with the 55th pick of the 2010 draft. This was notable for a few reasons. One is that the Jazz passed over more accomplished players like Jon Scheyer or Jeremy Lin in favor for what looked to be a player best described as a small fish in a small pond. The 2nd reason it was notable was because the Jazz have been known for drafting 2nd round gems like Mo Williams, C.J. Miles and Paul Millsap. For some reason it seems like 2nd round or undrafted players (Wes Matthews) respond well to Coach Sloan and the Jazz system. I don’t know if it is because they work harder or are just underrated by the NBA draft system. For those two reasons I was interested in find out more about Evans.

My interest in Evans soon turned to disappointment after I started looking over his college stats. Really the Jazz were going to take a guy, who scored 7.9 points per game for Western Kentucky?  He wasn’t even listed in any pre-draft articles I read about possible 2nd round picks. If I remember correctly, I don’t remember him even making Chad Ford’s top 100 players.

However, things started happening that reaffirmed my faith in the Jazz management’s ability to select 2nd round steals. One thing that impressed me the most was this article on David Berri’s The Wages of Wins Journal.  The title was “Blake Griffin Might Rank Among the All-Time Best Rookies (and John Wall probably won’t.” I encourage you to read the entire thing, especially considering his prediction on Blake Griffin seems to be spot on. Below is what Mr. Berri wrote about Jeremy Evan’s impressive numbers:

As good as Evan Turner might be, Landry Field and Jeremy Evans might be even more productive. Both of these players, though, were taken in the second round.  And given the link between draft position and minutes played (those taken later play less), it is possible neither will play enough to make much of a difference for their respective teams.

The season has started and so far Berri seems correct on most things. He even followed up on Evans and the Jazz yesterday in a post on his blog found here.  Fields and Evans have been posting incredible Win Share numbers. While Fields has leveled off a little bit his total WS/48 minutes is still 0.109, which is still really good for a 2nd round pick. The Knicks have rewarded such production with the 2329 minutes. Jeremy Evans has produced an even better WS/48 of 0.185. If he had played enough minutes that would be good enough to be the 17th best in the NBA. However, Evans doesn’t play enough minutes and it isn’t even close. He is 13th on the team in minutes with only 344 minutes played. Considering the Jazz have played 74 games, that means Evans has only played on average 4.6  minutes per game.

What does this all mean? Probably nothing. Evans is probably one of those backup players, whose numbers would come down to earth if he played more minutes. But what if the numbers did mean something? What if he really is that productive of player. Could Evans be that missing piece in Utah’s frontcourt? Imagine a frontline of Jefferson, Millsap, Okur and Evans. Could that matchup with the Gasol, Bynum and Odom? If it comes down to beating the Lakers then this team stands a better chance then any team with Boozer playing meaningful minutes. Jefferson has more size to defend Gasol and Evans has both the size and quickness to at least stand a chance against Odom. I know I am probably being too optimistic, especially considering how poorly the Jazz have played since trading Deron Williams, but at this low point it is nice to look for a few positives.

In the interest of fairness below are the plus/minuses of Jeremy Evans

• Plus - Great advanced stats. A PER of 20.6 and a WS/48 of 0.185 are both the best on the current team.
• Minus - No idea if those advanced stats would continue if he played more minutes.
• Plus -  Lot of potential considering he is only a rookie.
• Minus- He is already 23 years old. To give you some perspective Paul Millsap had played over 3,000 minutes in the NBA before his 23rd birthday. That’s a little more than the 344 minutes Evans has played.
• Plus - He has made 68% of his shots. This isn’t that unusual for him considering his career low field goal % in college was 62.5%. He might not take a lot of shots, but when he does he makes them at an impressive rate.
• Minus – Not a good shooter as evidenced by his free throw %. In college he shot 68% from the line and so far in the NBA he is only shooting 68%.  Without some type of shot improvement it is hard to see him being a reliable scoring option.
• Plus - Have you seen that athleticism? The play the Jazz run where Evans spins to the goal and the point guard throws an alley-oop to him is one of the most visually pleasing sights in the NBA.
• Minus - That seems like the only way Evans scores. He doesn’t have any post moves and relies too much on one single play that consists of him catching the ball and dunking it. He needs some more complexity to his game, since I have to believe that most teams are going to wise up on how to defend him.
• Plus- From looking at his +/- he is the 2nd best player on the team with a net positive of 9.8.
• Minus – The strong +/- might just be a combination of a small sample size combined with the fact that when Evans is playing might also be the time when the other team’s backups are also playing.
• Plus - Evans PER advantage over the other ‘s team power forward is a +12.6. In other words based on the stats he is dominating his competition.

It is hard to know if Evans can be a big contributor to the Jazz without him playing more minutes. From the few minutes he has played it looks like he can help the team out. I am curious to find out more about the potential of Jeremy Evans.

The Jazz backcourt this year was terrible even before trading Deron Williams. Raja Bell has been an unquestionable failure as a starting shooting guard. The team has invested the majority of their resources (most notably cash) to the frontcourt by paying Millsap, Jefferson and Okur. They went for size and tried to manage the shooting guard position on the cheap. Instead of paying Kyle Korver $5M a year they signed Raja Bell for  $3M a year. Instead of matching the Blazers offer for Wes Matthews the Jazz went out and signed someone like Earl Watson.

I decided to do some analysis by looking at what guards left last year’s team compared to some of the current options. The former Jazz players make about twice as much as the current Jazz backcourt options. They are twice as expensive, but have produced more than three times as many wins. Below is a chart comparing the former players with the current players:

When looking at Raja Bell play what Jazz fan can’t help but think of how much better the team would be with Matthews, Korver or Brewer. Instead of Ronnie Price missing shot after shot as the backup point guard, the Jazz could have at least had Eric Maynor provide a little more value. The Jazz had the options, but decided to do things cheaply, and that could be one of the reasons why this season has gone so poorly. For the Jazz they didn’t get what they paid for – they got less.

Make no mistake about it, the Jazz season ended last night at the hands of the 17 win Minnesota Timberwolves. The current playoff odds by John Hollinger peg the Jazz as having a 4.4% chance of making the playoffs, and that might be optimistic. The Jazz season officially ends on April 13th after their last game against the Denver Nuggets, but really losing to the Twolves was the real end. There will be time to review what happened in this unusual season, but now I am going to focus on the game I attended last night.

When discussing the game let me start off the few positives – the Jazz rookies. Gordon Hayward made some tough threes and his current season three point percentage is an impressive 44%. If he can continue to shoot this well then he might make me reconsider my prediction that he will never be an average NBA player. He looked like a different player last night than he has for the majority of the season. Derrick Favors looks like he is an active rebounder and one can certainly see the potential that made him the 3rd pick in last year’s draft.

However, neither of those players were nearly as impressive as Jeremy Evans. Watching the game it seemed like the Jazz were a different team when the tall, lanky, athletic 2nd round pick from Western Kentucky was on the court. One can point out the fault that he doesn’t seem to do much offensively besides dunk the ball, but he seems to be one of the players that always finds himself in the right position. He moves well without the ball and is able to find openings where he can collect the ball (either off a rebound or a pass) and dunk it. In a game where the Jazz lost by 21, it is noteworthy that Evans had a +/- of +10. It wasn’t just a subjective opinion that with Evans on the court the Jazz were a much better team.

Guess who was on the receiving end of this alley-oop from Earl Watson?

Those were the positives and considering the final result it is nice at least the Jazz rookies were impressive. However, it is impossible to be a Jazz fan and be happy with the game last night. It is one thing to give up 131 points to the Knicks, but it is a completely different thing to give up 121 points to the lowly Timberwolves. It looked like the Jazz defense was lost all night. I don’t know if it was a lack of energy, a lack of focus or just that this team is just a terrible defensive team. In terms of defensive efficiency the Jazz are now ranked 22nd out of 30th, so that probably gives you an indication of their defensive talent. The team’s defense made Jonny Flynn and Wayne Ellington look like the future starting backcourt of the Western Conferance All-Star team.

If defense is the number one negative I saw from last night here are a few others:

• Give Raja Bell credit for extra shooting practice before the game. At least he is trying because when the game starts he is a complete non-factor. Why didn’t the Jazz just sign Ronnie Brewer instead of Bell? Bell needs to the 10th man on the team for the Jazz to make an impact.
• I can see why some people complained about Devin Harris’s lack of consistent effort in New Jersey. Sometimes it seems like Harris can be an All-Star (the Pacers game) and then other times like this game he barely looks like a backup point guard.
• It is early to think about the draft and I almost always am a proponent of drafting talent over need, but is there anyway the Jazz can NOT draft a guard in the 2011 Draft?
• Has there been one game this year where Andrei Kirilenko has been worth the $217K he is paid per game? Yes, AK47 in a little over 2 games gets paid as much as Jeremy Evans entire salary this year.
• You can’t fault Memhet Okur for his injury, but it does make me wonder how this team would look with a frontline of Okur, Millsap, Jefferson, Favors and Evans.

Maybe I am being too harsh on the Jazz. They were without Paul Millsap and it isn’t like Al Jefferson is normally going to go 4-13 from the field. This team will be better than a team that losses by 21 to the Timberwolves. Right? Regardless it won’t matter this year. This year’s season is over as the Jazz have been reduced to an organization that should focus their efforts on player development and scouting.

Yesterday, Al Jefferson scored 34 points on 71% shooting and won the game on a tip-in at the buzzer. This was another impressive recent game from the Jazz power forward. Following Jefferson this year there have been two main things that have stuck out:

1. How much better he has played without Deron Williams?
2. How there seems to be a reverse correlation between how Jefferson is playing and the Jazz winning?

Looking at the first point here are some numbers to consider:

• In the 8 games after Williams was traded, Jefferson has scored 28 points a game on 60% shooting.
• In the 57 games he played with Williams he averaged 17.4 points per game on 48% shooting.
• His average game score (a Hollinger metric used to judge a player’s productivity in a game) went from 13.7 per game with Williams to 23.5 without Williams.

In the pre-season Williams told Jefferson that he was going to “make him an All-Star.” It is early, but if he continues at this rate then Williams would have fulfilled that prediction by leaving.

Below is a graph where I took Jefferson’s game score and average them out in five game buckets. For example the first bucket (games 1-5) shows Jefferson’s game score average of 13.5. The last bucket (games 61-65) shows Jefferson’s game score average of 23.1.

There is definitely an upwards trend that graphically represents Jefferson’s impressive streak lately. However, as Jefferson has improved the Jazz have been losing more and more. Below is a breakdown of the number of wins in those same 5 game buckets:

Unfortunately Al Jefferson’s improvement hasn’t resulted in wins. That doesn’t mean that Jefferson’s good play is preventing the Jazz from winning. There could be many other factors affecting the Jazz ability to win. I assume the Jazz optimist will look at Jefferson’s recent play as a positive, while the Jazz pessimist will think Jefferson is one of those players that only plays well on bad teams. Time will tell if Jefferson is a good player stuck on a bad team (think Ray Allen in Seattle) or an overrated player who only puts up good stats on bad teams (Shareef Abdur-Rahim).

It has been nearly two weeks since the Deron Williams trade and the Jazz are still trying to find out what they have in Derrick Favors and Devin Harris. The two players have only played a combined 272 minutes, which is way too small of a sample size to start judging that portion of the trade. (We won’t know about the success of the two draft picks for awhile, so it will be even longer before we can judge the second part of the trade. In other words it is going to be a long time before we know if this trade was a net positive, negative or neutral for the Jazz.)

However, I am impatient, so I reached out to Mark Ginocchio of the Truehoop Nets blog Nets are Scorching. For anyone interested in the Nets or the NBA in general I highly recommend this blog.  I had read some of his opinions on the trade and wanted to ask him some questions on Derrick Favors and Devin Harris. Below are my questions and his insightful answers

KM - I heard rumors that Devin Harris was frustrated with losing and wasn’t giving as much effort as he did early in his career.  Are these rumors true? Did you see a consistent effort from Harris or do you think that he would only play hard in certain situations?

MG – Let me preface this by saying that Devin Harris was really put through a lot this season, starting in the preseason when he was first mentioned as trade bait in a Carmelo Anthony deal. He’s said all the right things, and while he’s dealt with his share of injuries, I never thought he was milking an injury due to lack of interest or effort (a la Vince Carter in Toronto). However, I do think Harris suffers from some focus issues and he didn’t seem to appreciate Avery Johnson’s micromanaging. There are games where Harris appears like he’s looking to score first, create second and then there are times where he’s looking to pass too much, rather than take an open shot or create for his slumping team. And he’s always been a wild card on the defensive end. He was one of the best defensive PGs I’d ever seen when he was in Dallas, but since he’s come to the Nets, his effort and focus on that end had to be questioned, especially during last seasons’ 12-win campaign.

KM - Derrick Favors – was he someone you wanted to draft? Was the plan all along to bring him along slowly? Did it concern you that he only played 19 minutes a game, while other rookie post players Demarcus Cousins and Greg Monroe were playing 27 and 26 minutes a game respectively? If you could go back in time would you have had the Nets draft someone else?

MG – Once the Nets lost the John Wall sweepstakes, I think the idea for front office was to draft Favors and to use his boundless potential as trade bait for a “superstar” player. He was the centerpiece for any talks for Anthony, and obviously a key to the Deron Williams trade.

He’s just so raw, but he has crazy athleticism and good defensive instincts (though he picks up way too many stupid fouls). I would have loved getting to watch him come around slowly, but I obviously understand why the Nets would shop him for guys like Deron and ‘Melo (more so Deron). Giving that the Nets were almost certain to trade that pick, I can’t imagine wanting someone else. Cousins is a head case and would probably scare some teams off, and nobody else taken after Favors seems to have his ceiling as an athletic freak.

KM – Derrick Favors – He seems like an active rebounder, but when it comes to shooting he is limited to dunks and layups. Are there any insights you had while watching Favors play?

MG – Favors can also mix in a mid-range jumper from time-to-time but I don’t think he’s ever going to be a traditional stretch-four. However, a lot of his offensive limitations, at least with the Nets, were brought on because the team never called any sets for Favors. He was on the floor primarily to rebound, block shots, and scavage points through putbacks and easy dunks. I don’t think Avery Johnson ever had any confidence in him as an offensive player.

KM – Harris and Favors – The Jazz have really struggled defensively (20th in defensive efficiency). Will Harris and Favors help there?

MG – Provided that Favors can stay on the floor, I say yes. Kris Humphries is a better scorer and rebounder than Favors, but the team still had a better defensive efficiency when Favors was on the floor as opposed to Hump. As for Harris, as I said earlier, it depends on where his effort and focus level are. When he’s 100%, Harris can be a lockdown defender, but he hasn’t really focused on that aspect of his game since his Dallas days.