Super Sunday Syncopation #18

Woo! Superbowl! Don't expect much this week. Next week . . . much more . . .

• The Jazz continue to lose at home to good teams. Again, this is a problem. Winning four road games on a hard trip in November doesn't mean it's okay to let opposing guards do the finger guns and holster them on our home court. That's pathetic.
  
• Even worse, our best goon candidate was highly chastised to the point that he's afraid to foul people for fear of never playing again. This team needs a toughness coach. I thought our head coach was one. SMH
• Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap have been scoring a lot the last few games. How much? Well, over the last 5 games they've averaged 38.2 points per game. (Naturally, that's almost 20 each) That's a lot better than at the beginning of the season when they looked kinda bad on the floor together. They still don't look great, but they are working on it.
• Of course, the forward combo of Adrian Dantley and Karl Malone carried a 44.7 ppg average for the season back in the 1985-1986 season . . . and Karl and Thurl Bailey had a combined 47.3 ppg average for the 1987-1988 regular season . . .and then they averaged 48.6 ppg in the next season. So, what I'm saying is that Big Al and Thrillsap have a ways to go before we can list them as one of the better inside player scoring tandems of our franchise.
• There is no bones about it, our bench lacks legit scoring outside of C.J. Miles. A big part of this is the absence of a 16 and 8 guy (those are his averages over his career with us) named Mehmet Okur. The educated part of me knows that it's really a 2 year recovery time, but the fan in my still wants to see him on the court as soon as possible. I think that he would bring a dynamic aspect to our team back on offense with his range (and the resultant floor spacing), and knowledge of the sets. He was also blocking more than 1 shot a game last year. We've lost to the Lakers a number of times in a row in the playoffs. The last two years without Okur in the lineup. Right now we're seeing how good (or poorly) a team without Memo can compete on a regular basis.It isn't looking pretty. Sure, we can beat some of the average teams some of the time; but we're getting beat by the good teams almost regularly. I really miss Okur, and hope that he can return to form.

• That was from March 2009. Right now it's February 2011. That's only 23 months ago. Even if he's half as good, he's a heck of a lot better than Francisco Elson and Kyrylo Fesenko and would be, straight up, Beasting second units (and be on the floor to finish some games). It's hard to win every game when you only have 6 guys who can score. Okur would be a big help, especially during this push after the All-Star break.
• There's a lot more to write about, but I'm ending this early so I can watch the Super Bowl. Because this is America. And our freedoms allow for it.