Because of yesterday's mini-blow up I thought this would be interesting to do. First of all, we know that the Rocky Mountain Review is gone, and it would have been the first choice. That's not an option. The Utah Jazz look to have two options this time around: Vegas or Orlando. And for the purpose of this poll, think that this is just for THIS year; not that this has the be the only one the Jazz go to ever.

Vegas:

• Closer
• More Media
• More teams
• Schedule does not interfere with USA Select vs. Team USA team
• ...which would allow 20 year old Derrick Favors and 21 year old Gordon Hayward to participate with our team
• may still be some bad blood about Vegas shutting down the RMR
• "distractions" -- you know because our players are all cloistered saints in training (how many kids did Karl Malone have out of wedlock? how many times was Jamaal Tinsley arrested? Are you trying to tell me Enes Kanter hasn't seen a boobie before?)

Orlando:

• Father away
• quieter
• less spectacle (E.g. No Nate Robinson jersey ceremony)
• less competition
  
• have been going there, the last few years
• Disney world
• conflicts with USA Select vs. Team USA deal; and hence, no Gordon or Derrick

Yes, there is talk of going to both this year. Which some teams have done in the past. That would be really cool if it happens though. Who knows what our team will do? What do you think our team should do?

There's a lot of stuff to get to still this year, but I thought I would mix it up a bit by putting in a post that takes, literally, seconds to digest. Here's former Utah Jazz Bigman Thurl Bailey, all 6'11 of him, dunking on the Philadelphia 76ers Manute Bol. Manute was 7'7 (or 7'6 depending on sources). Manute had a really tough life and after his NBA career ended he focused on bringing peace and future prosperity to his home land. He ended up having to leave his native Sudan for a while after things started going crazy over there. Despite being a professional athlete in the US, he chose to spend a lot of his time doing work in refugee camps and assisting other people in his homeland. (One of his camp attendees was actually a young Luol Deng, who now plays for the Chicago Bulls) Bol had a really tough life has his homeland went into 'super duper civil war', which was not resolved until a year after his death.

On the other hand, Thurl played the part of Goliath in a straight to DVD musical Bible stories movie. Here's Thurl dunking it on Manute:

Always, of course, this was uploaded by Adam @ProdigyJF (twitter) / MemoisMoney (YouTube). He doesn't get the assist for this post, without his work there would be no post.

Note: my visuals have been severely minimized, please just click on the picture to view a larger version of it. After all, moving your head 2 inches away from the screen draws attention from your boss... and we certainly don't want that now do we?

Rebounding is one of the most misunderstood fundamentals of basketball. It is too often seen as "just that thing big athletic players naturally do"—but that can’t be further from the truth. Rebounding is all about technique and mindset; two things that all players can develop.

If you look down Al Jefferson’s stat sheet, you see that he is averaging nearly 20/10 a night… and you must be thinking "man this Al Jefferson dude must know how to rebound—I better watch some video of him to learn his technique". However, if you watched the actual games he played in (or listened to the Red & Blue Show), you would be cussing out Al Jefferson for his lack of effort in the pursuit of the ball. Throughout the season, I too confused as to how Al Jefferson was able to post 10 rebounds a night despite the alleged lack of effort. In this article, I hope to straighten many of these confusions out as I break down some frame by frame stills that capture Al Jefferson’s logic when he goes up for a rebound.

Before I can start analyzing Al Jefferson’s rebounding, it is important to understand the different components of rebounding. Rebounding, specifically defensively, depends on positioning and a determination to get the ball. Positioning is done while the shot is in the air, or as coaches like to call it, the "dead time". In this dead time, you always assume a miss so it is imperative to do your work early to put yourself in the best possible position to grab the rebound. This involves bodying your man up, boxing him out, and anticipating the rebound location. Once the ball hits the rim, it’s primed for someone to snatch it, and that is when pure determination comes to play.

Positioning & Boxing Out

If there was one thing coaches couldn’t stress more about rebounding, it’s doing your work early by boxing out. Boxing out is so important because it creates a seal on your opponent not only to give you the best position to get the rebound, but it also stops the pursuit for an offensive rebound by your man. To help illustrate proper technique, take a look at these stills of Biedrins and Duncan. Notice their activity during the "dead time", along with where their eyes are.

As you can see in these pictures, immediately after the shot is taken, Biedrins and Duncan both immediately take their attention off the ball handler and focus on boxing their man out in order to get position for the miss. Because of their activity during this dead time, their man (Evans and Jefferson in this case) are either stopped or slowed down from getting the offensive rebound. (Even though Biedrins was not able to fully seal off his man, the intentions were right in terms of immediately concerning yourself with your man and not the rebound itself.) Judging from the way they shifted their line of vision from the shooter to their man and boxed out immediately, you can see that they assumed a miss and motivated themselves to get in a position to grab that miss. Now look these stills of Big Al (pay attention to Al’s man, along with the direction of his vision):

Once the ball handler shoots the ball, you can see that Big Al is standing under the basket and watching the path of the ball. This a huge no-no, because he spending the "dead time" watching the ball instead of boxing out and that is due to the fact he’s not assuming the ball will be a miss. You should be reacting to get the rebound during the dead time, but Big Al isn’t starting to react until the ball hits the rim (look at the third frame in both stills.) By doing this, you now only have the time from when the ball hits the rim to when the ball is grabbed—as opposed to the time from when the ball is shot, hits the rim, and then when it’s grabbed. He lost all the "dead time" and now has very little time to do the proper work to get positioning (boxing out) for the rebound. Another consequence of Big Al not bodying up his man is it opens up an opportunity for his man to get an offensive rebound. This happened both times when Jordan and Gortat were able to go around Big Al and easily get the offensive rebound as Big Al turns to them and slaps his hands in disappointment.

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Locke is conducting season reviews on all the players at Locked on Sports. Be warned, though—it's pretty heavy.

Each player's analysis will be divided into seven parts (Al's has been finished, Millsap is currently at part 2), and there are a whole lot of stats in them. And besides being filled with a whole lot of stats, some of them are pretty obscure. Paul Millsap, apparently, has an activity level of 583.5. What does that mean? I have no idea. And I couldn't find a handy link in which the more obscure stats are explained.

But there is enough written commentary to get a feel for what Locke feels the stats say.

But of all the commentary, this to me says the most. It's specifically about Al Jefferson. But to me it says much more about the plan of the Jazz coaching staff:

He went from 38% of his offense being post up to 48% this year. Last year he was 74th in the NBA in post up and this year he is 19th, a huge improvement. His shooting percentage out of the post increased as well from 42.7% to 47.5% this year. A year ago he got a higher percentage of his offense off the cut and he is more efficient in those plays.

No shock that Al go a huge percentage of shots as post-ups, nor that he did a lot more this year than last. And I'm glad he's improved. But no matter the improvement, it's still nowhere as effective as his scoring off cuts. Synergy says he shoots 48% on post-ups and 64% on cuts.

And while Al deserves some criticism for this (the post iso does seem to be what he prefers), the big issue is the coaching staff. They're the ones who make the game plan. They're the ones who design the playbook. They're the ones who decided to do fewer of the more effective plays and more less effective ones.

I'm certainly not calling for Ty's head. My hope is just that he improves. That he abandons less-effective ideas and takes hold of more effective ones.

The more I investigate, the more I'm convinced that simple system changes could have a strong effect in how well the Jazz play next year.

By now you probably know that Kevin O'Connor was:

1. Put on the NBA's new Competition Committee, and
2. Voted in fifth place in the annual Executive of the Year Award

First the second of the two: I don't really like this award. And here's why: the Jazz have a pretty decent chance of being a great team by about 2013-14. That will be Year 4 of Favors/Hayward plus Year 3 of Kanter/Burks. As long as KOC plays his cards right during the next year, seeking and finding the right guys around them, they'll be really good.

But if things work out, why will the be so good? Because of the moves KOC made in 2010-11—picking Hayward (a fairly outside-the-box pick), the Deron trade for Favors, the guys acquired with the picks from that trade (Kanter, and the mythical GS pick), and getting a steal in drafting Burks at 12.

Real teams are built over years, with some good long-term thinking. The Executive of the Year Award rewards the GM who makes the most splashy instant-gratification moves that year. So in a way I'm glad KOC didn't win the award.

The Competition Committee makes decisions about rule changes to improve the NBA. It used to be made up of all 30 GM's. Now it isn't. It's both smaller and more diverse, including coaches, GM's, owners, and one player.

This is the committee that would decide on things like anti-flopping rules, eliminating offensive goaltending, etc. Amar already wrote up a detailed explanation and listed the other members of the committee, so you can check that out if you want more of the details.

I'm excited about KOC being on this committee. Mostly because it gives us a whole new set of complaints and dreams that we can now end with the refrain:

"KOC, make it happen!"

This is about the Spurs. But it's also about the Jazz. We all freak out at times over the thought that one of our favorite guys may leave Utah for the bright lights of elsewhere. I think losing Deron—and knowing the trade was necessary because the chances of him staying at that point were a bit slim—scarred us a bit.

So ... how do we make our stars desperately want to stay with us? Well, here's what Chris Ballard at SI wrote about the Spurs, Popovich, and Tim Duncan:

The story of Duncan's career begins on an island, in the summer of 1997. That's when Popovich flew down to St. Croix to meet his team's No. 1 draft pick. On the first day, Duncan took his new coach swimming. Out they went, one man tall and assured, the other short and as pale as the sand, his arms churning furiously. Duncan led them past rocky outcroppings into deeper water, the shoreline of the island quickly receding. Popovich began to think about how far out they were, about what lay beneath, about the waves cresting off the rocks. Still, he kept going, determined not to show weakness.

Over the next three days—or two or maybe four, neither can remember—the two men swam and lay on the beach and ate, talking about life and family and priorities. Everything but basketball. Despite a difference of nearly 30 years, they connected in a way few athletes and coaches do. Today Popovich tears up just talking about it. "I really cherish that time," he says. "It was like an instant respect and understanding of each other. Almost like we were soul mates."

From that point on, the two were on the same page. Other than a brief flirtation with the Orlando Magic in 2003, when Duncan was a free agent—he and Pop stayed up late drinking beers in Pop's backyard, talking it through—Duncan never wavered in his commitment to the team. This, in turn, allowed Popovich to build his highly successful system, the tenets of which were simple: The offense runs through Duncan, the defense runs through Duncan, and if you don't like it, you're gone. It holds true to this day. "I like role players who aren't very good but have a skill," Pop says with a chuckle, though he is not joking. "I know who's going to have the ball on our team, and need players who understand this."

Kevin O'Connor, Greg Miller, and Ty Corbin—if you want our young studs to stay with us, if you want them to have loyalty to match their greatness, if you want to be able to have time to build a team—because it takes more than two or three years to build the right team—if you want these things as much as I do, then:

Build treat them like this and work to build this kind of relationship with them.

A couple of pictures. First, it was my 6-year-old's birthday last week. Here's his birthday stash:

And second. At the final game of the regular season, the Jazz Dancers were at the ESA doors, passing out the most random "The first three thousand fans will receive" gifts of all time: A Derrick Favors Cooking Apron. Yes, I have six of them now.

The 2011-2012 NBA Season is not over quite yet, well, it is for the Utah Jazz. Being a Utah Jazz blog it's never too early to start looking at what needs to happen this off-season. The #1 thing I want the Jazz to do is to at least PLAY in the same league as the rest of the teams. This means adopting the successful practices of other teams, instead of regressing into further and further insular doctrines. This may mean trading young players for older players. This may mean trading productive fan favorites to make room for young players with more potential. This may mean adopting advanced stats gurus. This may mean adopting a more friendly relationship with social media and blogs. This may even mean changing our playbook to actually incorporate the three point shot -- and getting guys who can make that shot.

There are a lot of things I'd want the Jazz to do under the blanket of joining the other teams in the league. There is one really big thing that a lot of other teams do that the Jazz have (for the most part) avoided doing. And that's overpay for a bad player.

Let's take a look at all the players currently under contract next year who make at least $8.0 million dollars, shall we? And let's look at them divided by player class (Bigman, Wing, or Point guard), and compare their Career WS/48s. Not included in these lists are free agents (Tim Duncan, Steve Nash, etc?), or reference to player ages, sizes, injury history, or experience. It's just Bigs, Wings, and PGs -- how much they are on the books for next year, and how good have they been according to WS/48. (Because not everyone likes PER, including myself, and there are arguments that I've been using softer stats lately)

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SB Nation's Jon Bois did a great job with this, looking at each NBA team's slogan, and putting that slogan in a category. AND THEN, charting that slogan against the other teams in that category -- based upon winning percentage. Fascinating. And horrible, if you have any background in marketing. Horrifying if you are a fan.

While the Get Loud / Be Proud anthem missed out, the Jazz were represented by this genius idea:

Check out the full post here.

The Competition committee is a small group, cabal if you will, of individuals who vote and discuss prospective rules changes to the NBA game. Everything from determining how flops are punished, to proposals to a four point line have to go through this group. The NBA's board of governors decided that this Comp committee needed to change. According to the SL Trib the committee "will now include two owners, four general managers, three head coaches and one representative from the NBA Players Association" (SL Trib, 2012). Fun stuff.

As you can see from that list, right now 9 of the 10 members have been decided. And 5 of the members represent "smaller" markets (counting Toronto as a smaller market despite the fact that it is essentially a more polite version of New York city, with more parking spots). If the NBA player comes from a big market team, like Chicago, it will make it 'even' in terms of small market vs. large market.

Of course, it will remain to be seen how great a disparity exists between the markets despite any protracted gesture of 'fairness' by adding KOC to this group. Hope these guys can work together to help rectify a lot of the problems the league currently has. I think it would be good to have two refs as part of this group to. They are a major problem in this league, and would need to be involved if there was going to be a real look at flopping and any real attempts to remove it from the game.

As you can tell from the clever DB title, Jazz news is starting to get pretty scarce. We've hit that lull happens every year between the end of the Jazz season to either the lottery drawing or the draft itself. This season we could spend a little extra time wandering the proverbial desert unless something gets shaken up on May 30th.

That being said, we could also have a wild summer starting with the draft depending on how the Jazz play things. Clark and Andy have done a fantastic job in laying out just about every conceivable scenario in which the Jazz use their assets, all we can do now is sit back and enjoy the ride.

One thing that I have been mulling over in my brain since the end of the Spurs series is what I call the Millsap dilemma. What I'm about to say may not go over well with a large contingency of Dunkers, even some of my peers on the Dunk roster, but I have come to a conclusion on the best way to improve this team and keep a player we adore. Millsap has to move to the bench. I am willing to go out on a limb and say that the Jazz will never win a championship with Millsap as their starting PF. As good as he is, they are simply too undersized for them to be effective and frankly, all things being considered Favors defensive prowess probably puts him pretty close to being the "best player" for the position.

Think about it. If Millsap embraced the role of 6th man ala Manu, Odom, Terry, or Harden, he would destroy 90% of the backup PF's and SF's in the league. To have that skilled of a player anchoring the bench is the type of thing that contenders are made of. Unfortunately, those same attributes that made him evolve from a second round pick to a fringe all-star are the same that won't allow him to be comfortable being relegated to a bench role- not for long anyway.

Over at her blog, Moni has the intel on DWill hanging out in Russia with his homeboy AK. This strikes me as quite odd. It always seemed that their relationship was a bit tentative when they played together here, so to see Deron over there attending games and going on double dates with AK and Masha a bit strange. Does he have ulterior motives? Is he trying to recruit him? For which team? It is entirely possible that Deron and AK developed a relationship after they left the Jazz. Deron seems to have matured quite a bit and for some reason is wont to surround himself with ex-Jazz teammates. Personally, I think it would be great to see them together somewhere just as it was when Memo joined the Nets. I think I will always be a bit sentimental towards those guys, especially Deron.

I hope everyone has continued to follow the playoffs. I haven't had time to follow as close as I like because of a new job, but they have been pretty great, especially this second round. I'm sure many of you have your "alternate" teams. I try to always keep mine in the East, so my alternate teams are the Sixers and the Pacers, and both teams managed to steal the second game on the road. Both of those series are going to be very good, but I don't think any of the EC teams have a chance against the Spurs and Thunder, that is becoming more apparent.

The official start dates for the summer leagues:

Orlando: July 9-13 (tentatively)

Vegas: July 13-22

With the Olympic team practicing in Vegas from July 6th to the 12th, it looks like the Jazz are going to have to be in the Vegas league, unless they decide to field a team minus Favors and Hayward.