You Just Got MillSlapped!
by Patrick517 on May 2, 2009 2:02 PM MDT
17 comments
A devastating injury to Carlos Boozer looked like it could spell doom for the Utah Jazz this season. But Jerry Sloan wasn't worried. He had an ace up his sleeve. The NBA was about to discover something already well known to Jazz fans. Paul Millsap can play some mighty fine basketball.
Inserted into the starting lineup just weeks into the season, Millsap played like a man possessed. Millsap put together an impressive string of nineteen straight double doubles. He almost single-handedly kept the Utah Jazz in contention as the team weathered nagging injuries to Deron Williams, Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur. Millsap played like a big bowling ball in the post, pushing himself to offensive rebound after offensive rebound. Listed generously at 6'8'', Millsap did yeoman's work against players half a foot taller than him. The national media took notice and word spread around the league. Finally, the Utah Jazz had a big man who not only wanted to play defense, but one who seemed to thrive off of his defense. Watching Millsap and Kirilenko swat balls away from the basket was a sight for Jazz fan's sore eyes.
As we rolled into late February, Carlos Boozer was set to return to the Jazz lineup. How would Millsap adjust to life back on the bench? On February 23 we seemed to have the answer as Millsap put up 16 and 12 in a big win over Atlanta. In the next few games, Millsap didn't put up the big double doubles we had come to expect but few people seemed to notice. Why? Because the team was riding a twelve game winning streak. Second place in the west was once again looking like a very real possibility. At this point, Carlos Boozer was getting his starting minutes back and Millsap was once again relegated to back up duties. The team struggled, losing seven of it's last nine games and quickly got bumped in the playoffs to the superior Los Angeles Lakers. But Paul Millsap had made his point. He deserves to be a starting Power Forward in the National Basketball Association.
As we head into the offseason, Millsap is one of this teams biggest free agents. The argument among the fans and in the Front office is going to be about who this team should bring back. Millsap is going to get paid by someone this offseason and it seems highly unlikely that the Jazz will bring back both he and Carlos Boozer. I won't make an argument for or against Boozer here but I just want to add some stuff about Paul Millsap. For the third straight year he improved his stats in almost every category. His free throw shooting has improved to 70% and he showed off a fairly consistent mid-range jump shot. His PER of 18.6 was good for second best on the team. He finished sixth in the NBA in Offensive Rebounds and tenth in field goal percentage. He toughed it out and only missed six games due to injury. It's just his third year. He's only 24. He's only going to get better.
Not too bad for an undersized power forward picked in the latter half of the second round.
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full marks
for the title of this post. Henceforth I shall call every single blocked shot by Paul a MillSlap.
(creating memes isn’t just easy, it’s fun!)
Uh, do you think you could draw me like a ninja?
Perspective
Millsap could be a starting PF on a team that has other stars, but he’s not going to be your star PF. I don’t think he’ll be an All-Star. His double-doubles had modest point totals, and I don’t think he can outdo it. He has overachieved and is very near his ceiling. For a moment reading this post I wanted to wonder if he was like another undersized beast, Chuck Barkley, but Barkley had more lift, more grit (if you can believe it), and skills with the ball that you don’t/won’t see from Millsap (watch the old NBA Superstars video with Barkley highlights and you’ll see what I mean).
All respect to Millsap. We love his game here in Utah. He’s all hustle and tough, but that just means he is overachieving. I think he’s at potential if you judge it on a per minute basis.
Nice post. Good times remembering Millsap’s year. He was one of the positives.
I'll make it coach.
so what do you think?
sign-and-trade while his value is at its highest? because he’s almost certainly going to get overpaid this off-season, in my opinion. Or at least over-offered, since he’s restricted and the Jazz can match.
Uh, do you think you could draw me like a ninja?
I don't think he's going to get overpaid....
He finished the year averaging 13.5 and 8.6. I don’t think there’s many GMs who are going to look beyond the numbers. It helps that David Lee is going to be on the market at the same time. I think you can look at what he signs for and subtract a couple million per year. It might just be wishful thinking on my part but I think the Jazz have a good chance at signing him.
i agree
all respect to sap, and love his game and effort.
i think some comparisons can be drawn between sap and matty.
(please stop throwing up)
like mtn said, sap is all hustle and tough, and being undersized, he will have to work harder than someone bigger to produce. i think when his body goes, his game goes—very similar to what we have seen with matty. and unfortunately, we saw a little bit of that this year when it seemed like he never really came back after he hurt his knee.
i also think that shums is right, and that he will definitely get overpaid this summer. and if we have to pay him more than 7- 8 mill/yr to keep him, that’s too much imo. that said, if he gets a big offer that goes along with major minutes, he’s earned that.
Although most of them probably won't do it all three years
I think that’s the best part of the stat – he did it freshman-junior, not sophomore-senior.
When he first came on last year, I thought he would replace AK
He used to do a lot of weak-side shot blocking like AK, lots of (my new favorite term) hands on balls, and, of course, garbage duty. I thought that made AK redundant and overpaid. Then when he started getting Boozer’s minutes, we all thought he was competing with Booze for a job, and strangely, it’s as if his game morphed into what Booze does – no more shot blocking, just more rebounding and offense from the block.
If we managed to sign’n’trade/trade Boozer and AK, overpay Sap and still pick up another big, that might be the best scenario of all. I just don’t know who that other big is. I just think the Jazz mgmt are traditionally not the type to make a big splash, a big risk that could pay big dividends. They tend to prefer ‘comfortable’ to ‘daring.’ And that’s why I think they’ll end up keeping AK and Boozer and watching Sap go.
I'll make it coach.
Jeez …. that’s a tough poll to answer.
I’m not sure a Millsap and Memo combination is good enough. I think the team would need another star, probably a #2 guy to Deron’s lead, to be a legitimate contender. You’d have a lot of money tied up after signing both … how do you get that other guy?
But is a Boozer/ Memo frontcourt, enough either?
The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear.
Maybe … not a certainty, but maybe.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a star that the team would need in that situation. They might be able to get away with a couple of high level role players instead of a star — like a Varejao as their sixth man, a Battier as a starting small forward, keep Brewer and then have a very good bench — That team could have a shot at a title.
Would a Millsap/Okur version have a shot in that same situation? Emm, not sure, I don’t think so.
the poll results are pretty interesting...
i’m not sure we’ll see such one-sided poll results again unless someone throws up a “should brev brev start over dwill?” poll
I thought that option would win
but not by that big a margin. I guess people really did get sick of Boozer’s antics this year.
stolen steez
FYI….I came up with the name of pimpslap Millslap last year…just so everyone knows :D
anyway I just want to say that sometimes Jazz management reminds me of watching Fox news for a millisecond while I try hard to hold back my regurgitation. Like Hannity or the female talking head for all fascists, Ann Anti-christ Coulter convinced that there is only one of doing things and that is the last word.
We really need to work out some deal with the Raptors that somehow includes Bonsu…seriously…
Are there really 187 people reading this blog?
“And it’s 1-8-7 on the undercover cop…”
I'll make it coach.
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