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Jazz Bags - Shoot Around Thoughts 2-1-12
Ben Bagley - February 1st, 2012
Tags: Jazz, Pro, NBA, Basketball, Bags and Parks
Different Offense
The Jazz offense has struggled since Al Jefferson’s injury first appeared. Teams are focusing on taking away Paul Millsap (or at least double teaming him making life difficult on him) and making the Jazz perimeter players make plays.
This is not a bad thing!
For one, the Jazz have found ways to win games against Sacramento and Portland while struggling. CJ Miles and Gordon Hayward have been more aggressive at getting to the rim and its helped.
The other positive is the young bigs have grown given the increased opportunities. Case in point, Kanter finishing the game the other night playing a stretch of 13 straight minutes. Or Favors playing 41 productive minutes the other night.
So not a lot of harm in some ugly offense as of late, because other guys on the team not named Al or Paul are growing and beginning to find ways to contribute.
That being said, it will be nice to Al playing tonight and how the growth of other works with both bigs back in the line up.
Al’s Ankle
Al described playing the other night as “running on glass”. Since then he has been in a walking boot, taken some shots, and gotten treatment. Al says the ankle is much better and he will play tonight. He practiced yesterday and went through shoot around today.
He continued to say that he can’t do further damage to the ankle it’s just something he has to keep on top of with treatment. Says it began to feel better and he slacked off the treatment then it acted up again.
The Conductor
“Chris Paul would make my Grandmother and all her sisters around him better.”
That’s how Al Jefferson described Chris Paul’s offensive game. Combine other descriptions from Jazz players and coaches this morning and Chris Paul is a “artist” “orchestrating” as symphony on the basketball court.
The key that makes Paul such a good offensive player is his ability to keep the dribble alive and play the angles to get his guys very good shots. He’s also capable of splitting double teams or the pick and roll defense. It’s when he does this that he is most dangerous. The Jazz cannot allow him to split the defense and get to the lane or guys are going to get dunks, or he’s getting to the hoop.
How to Defend Blake
Seems simple enough, keep him away from the basket and make him a jump shooter. In the last game, the Jazz did just that holding Blake to just 10 points on 5 or 12 shooting (included 0 trips to the free throw line).
In that game, Blake went 2/3 at the rim, 1/5 from 3 to 9 feet, and 2/4 from 16 to 23 feet. So 9 of his 12 attempts were jump shots.
Chris Paul will change that, but keep him away from the rim and you also avoid the POSTER.
Mic’d Up
Ty will be wearing a mic tonight for ESPN. As most coaches Ty seemed less than thrilled about it saying it does make you a little guarded at times in what you say.
Jerry Sloan used to get the mic on, then turn the production assistant and ask how to turn it off. The assistant would show him, and the mic wouldn’t go back on the rest of the night.
Jerry must have been grandfathered in, I asked Ty if he’d do that and he said he tried and they told him to turn it back on.