Sunday Syncopation # 34

Wow, now that the draft is (pretty much) done and gone, let’s get back to all the other parts of basketball . . .

Social Media be CRAZY!

Do you remember a world where we didn’t have things like Facebook and Twitter? I couldn’t imagine actually being a blogger in those days – not just for the way that we can easily find other people who have the same crazy obsession about the NBA to talk with; but because access to the players would be that much more difficult. Well, for a stats guy like me it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I would just continue to blog about the stats. But thankfully we don’t live in that world. We live in a connected one where the NBA has had to make rules about social media behavior. You know that in the rookie pre-season NBA adjustment camp that is mandatory that they go over this quite a bit. They do not want to have any more Charlie Villanueva (@CV31) repeats (where he was tweeting at halftime during a game).

That said, over the last week or so the Jazz PR guy has been going crazy getting more guys on twitter. Of course we’ve had guys on twitter before. So here’s the combined list that I have so far . . . (which may be incomplete or wrong – feel free to correct me):

• Alec Burks - @AlecBurks10
• C.J. Miles - @CJMiles34
• Derrick Favors - @dfavors14
• Devin Harris - @34waystoassist
• Enes Kanter - @Enes_Kanter
• Gordon Hayward - @gordonhayward
• Kyle Weaver - @kyleweaver5
• Marc Cousin - @BigMarc50
• Ronnie Price - @OfficialRP17 - seems to be taken down
  

There are some front office types as well out there, here are two.

• Jazz CEO Greg Miller - @GregInUtah
• Jazz President Randy Rigby - @riggs88

These lists aren’t comprehensive, and do not include all the current players on different teams, nor does it include former players who have since retired. And of course, there are a number of guys out there who have family members, girlfriends, and right hand men out on twitter as well. You can find them on your own . . . some are purely for shock value; however, some of these people are actually basketball fans first, and Jazz family members second. You may be surprised with the value of tweeting with some of them.

Stats Class:

So, Mark Jackson is a coach now. How crazy is that? I want to make fun of him more, but as much as we love Ty Corbin, he only has 8 coaching wins (record: 8-20 – 28.6 win %). Sure, Ty has been coaching for a long time though, as an assistant. He also has been coaching for years in the Summer league. As a head coach, though, he’s only has 8 wins more than a guy who has never coached before. How much of that is him, and how much of that is the situation? Last season in the post-Sloan / post-Deron era we had not only the problem of trying to win games with all the craziness of losing your head coach and best player, but we also had a ton of injuries and were playing against some really good teams as well. Those would have been hard wins to get for Red Auerbach, let alone a rookie head coach.

As a franchise, though, we have a crazy sense of understanding of the term Head Coach. For starters, we’ve only had 7 total head coaches. Ever. Even back in the New Orleans days. How many coaches have the Toronto Raptors or Los Angeles Clippers had just in the span of Jerry Sloan’s tenure here? Eight each? 12? Is there even a number that high? Anyway, here’s the list of all the head coaches we’ve had in the entire history of the franchise:

• Scotty Robertson
• Butch Van Breda Kolff
• Elgin Baylor
• Tom Nissalke
• Frank Layden
• Jerry Sloan
• Tyrone Corbin

And here are their relative success rates as a head coach for the Jazz:

Pie Chart? Why the heck not . . .

Clearly, in our understanding of the term, we’ve really only known one coach – Jerry Sloan. As a result, our initial understanding of Tyrone will be somewhat out of touch for what the regular competence, tenure, and ability is for the average NBA coach. I actually do see a time, in a potential reality 3 seasons down the line where if we continue to perform poorly, that some fans may start calling for his head. And that would kill me, because despite what he has so far had to work with, his performance isn’t in line with his ability. Our franchise is run on stability. (Really, only 7 coaches ever.) Tyrone is like a small seedling right now, if you shake him around too much he’s not going to develop the strong roots to grow into a strong, healthy, and productive plant. (Can you tell it’s gardening season for Amar?) I’m excited for all of our new players, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t excited about Tyrone’s growth as a head coach as well.

Time will tell where he fits in the continuum of Jazz coaches . . . because of youth, I expect his win percentage to be low for another year. But in two seasons we should be winning at least half our games and knocking on the door of the playoffs as well. Why am I so confident? Well, because Ty learned how to coach under a damn good coach himself.

Video of the Week:

Can it be Antoine Carr time nao? Yes. The Original Big Dog played in the NBA for 16 years, mostly spread out in three distinct blocks (Atlanta Hawks for 6 years, San Antonio Spurs for 3 years, and the Utah Jazz for 4). In between he played for the Sacramento Kings, and after Utah, the Houston Rockets and Vancouver Grizzlies. He has played in 1094 total games (987 regular season, 107 playoffs) and managed 9.3 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 0.9 bpg, and about 6.2 intimidations per game. He had a number of great seasons, and as far as being a role playing big, had 21 games in the playoffs where he scored 10 or more points. The vast majority (13) were with the Jazz. While it was not his highest scoring game, I think his best ever game (in the big picture) was in the 1998 NBA Finals. It was the Game 5 win for the Jazz, a 2 point victory, that wasn't decided until the very end. The Big Dog he finished the game with the second most points (5/6 FG, 2/2 FT – 12 points) in a much needed Utah Jazz victory against the Chicago Bulls. Jeff Hornacek went 2/7 in this game. John Stockton went 3/7. Bryon Russell went 2/6. The rest of the bench (minus Carr) went 4/11. Huge game. And he came up huge. Anyway, enjoy the video by YouTube superstar TheKingMisiek:

Hope you didn’t miss . . . .

• Andrew Unterberger (@AUgetoffmygold), who you may remember as the guy who saw a home game at all 30 NBA arenas this year, catalogued his Top 100 moments from the 2010-2011 NBA season. There aren’t a lot of Jazz moments, but breaking into the #5 spot is Paul Millsap’s Miracle in Miami. Millsap is a really good player that I think we overlook. He was super huge in that road game in Houston where he just couldn’t miss. But the Miami game was that much bigger – I don’t think we recognize how clutch that performance was. Sure, he was shooting crazy three pointers, but how about the basketball IQ for the last minute offensive rebound and put back to send the game to overtime? You can check out the full list at TheBasketballJones blog at theScore.ca.
• Spencer Ryan Hall (@saltcityhoops) at SaltCityHoops, had a great podcast where he talked about the NBA draft. However, what’s more important in this podcast is his talk about the Utah Flash. The Flash are a subject that is both near and dear to my heart. I love the concept of a farm system, and I would love the concept of using a farm team. This only makes increasing sense as the NBA (and the Jazz particularly) draft younger players who do not stay for all four years in college. As a result, when they come to the NBA, they are far from being able to contribute from day one. Using a farm system gives the pro team a chance to give younger guys playing time, coaching, and develop them without having to play them in the NBA and lose NBA games as a result. The Jazz had drafted a number of guys where this type of system would have been super useful, and perhaps have been super effective as well. For example, wouldn’t it have satisfied all parties in the pro-Fes / anti-Fes camps if he just played for 2 years straight with the Flash instead? I would have been happy with that. Instead he sat with the Jazz and did not get significantly better as a result. Which is dumb. I love the Flash. I love the D-League. And now the Jazz have neither – which is especially bad in a year where we have a lockout coming. (The Lockout does not affect the NBA D-League, btw, so it’ll be here next year even if the NBA is not) Great planning, Jazz! Great way to make the most of the things that are given to you, literally at your doorstop. Check it all out at SaltCityHoops, part of the ESPN Truehoop network.
• The NBA Draft has come and gone . . . and there were a number of great highlights. The Draft is really my favorite day of the year. (Not hyperbole either, it’s way better than my birthday or something selfish like that) It’s like the happy ending to 60 movies all in one night. Getting your dream job is rare. For the majority of these kids they have been working very hard for years to make it to the NBA. It doesn’t matter if they will never play in an NBA game, being drafted puts them in very elite company. Professionally saying that you were "an NBA draft pick" is pretty cool. What’s cooler than just being a draft pick? Being Jan Vesely and going full-Public Display of Affection on TVs all over the world. Awesome.
• That we drafted Enes Kanter and Alec Burks in the 2011 NBA Draft? There’s a ton of opinion about this. Spencer Campbell (@theutahjazzblog), from TheUtahJazzBlog / Podcast, was quick on the draw and found them all over the net and put them up in a post. Over all the opinion is that we did pretty well. Let’s not forget that we had two lotto picks, and one of them went way higher than it should have been because of a little lottery luck. What I’m saying here is that we had good picks and we didn’t screw them up. As always, the Bill Simmons draft stream of consciousness rant is fun to read. Check out his take, and all the other opinions at TheUtahJazzBlog.
• Moni (@monilogue) is one of the best Jazz bloggers out there. I’d say she was Top 3 All-Time, because no one out works her. She collected all the quotes from Kanter, Burks, Kevin O’Connor and the rest of the Jazz family into a post. Also what’s great is the Jazz math problem, check it out at JazzFanatical.
• Clint Peterson (@Clintonite33) took the time out to actually time Enes Kanter’s shot. He breaks down the shot into a series of movements and does an analysis of his shot mechanics. As a frame of reference he does the same for our own Mehmet Okur and also for perhaps the greatest shooter ever, the Celtics guard Ray Allen. The results are, or were for me at least, not surprising. Perhaps I have a little bit of confirmation bias around ‘proofs’ that support my current feelings about Kanter . . . but this was a very solid piece that you can catch at TheUtahJazzBlog.(Not Safe for people who have a medical condition preventing them from seeing amazing photoshops)
• Of course, I already wrote about how I have concerns for both of these guys . . . but in true Jazz Fan Fashion, I’m going to yell and root for them because they are on my team. You probably already read it over here, at SLCDunk.

Did you know . . . ?:

• That out of the 171 total Draft Picks that the New Orleans / Utah Jazz have made that the most frequent college / university that these players have come from is not a college at all. It’s international – of which we have 10 players: Aleksander Belov (’75), Joe Kazanowski (’83), Martin Muursepp (’96), Andrei Kirilenko (’99), Raul Lopez (’01), Alexsandar Sasha Pavlovic (’03), Pavel Podkolzin (’04), Ante Tomic (’08), Tadija Dragicevic (’08), and Enes Kanter (’11). Yes, not all of them actually played in the NBA; however, the list is larger if you include international players that did not make this list like Goran Suton (Euro who played at MSU), and Kyrylo Fesenko (who we did not draft, but traded his draft rights for at the hefty cost of the draft rights to Herbert Hill).

The next most frequent colleges and universities are:

• The University of Kansas (John Douglas ’78, Kelly Knight ’84, Greg Ostertag ’95, Jacque Vaughn ’97)
• The University of Minnesota (John Shasky ’86, Quincy Lewis ’99, and Kris Humphries ’04).
• The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Rich Schmidt ’75, Deron Williams ’05, Dee Brown ’06); which also included Roger Powell (undrafted rookie, ’06) on the team as well.
• The University of Georgia (Jacky Dorsey ’76, Dominique Wilkins ’82, Shandon Anderson ’96)
• Stanford University (Rich Kelly ’75, Wolfe Perry ’79, Jarron Collins ’01)
• Providence College (Billy Donovan ’87, Eric Murdock ’91, and Herbert Hill ’07 – who was traded for on draft night for Fes as previously mentioned)
• The University of Boston (Ken Boyd ’74, Ernie Cobb ’79, Wally West ’80)
• For you Utahns out there, there were two guys drafted by the Jazz from BYU (Alan Taylor ’80, Steve Trumbo ’82), and only one from Utah (Greg Deane ’79). Yes, two > one; however none of the BYU guys actually played in the NBA, while Deane played in 7 games.

Anyway, that’s it for another week. Tell me in the comments section if you like the new format. Tell me if you don’t. I like feedback. Always remember that this is your SLCDUNK – participation isn’t mandatory but it makes us that much more a fun place to visit during the doldrums of what looks like to be a very long off-season.