FanPost

Hayward vs Burks???? Really? Seriously?

I can't even believe I'm writing this fan post. Seriously? It has to come to this? There are some Utah Jazz fans that have been spreading and growing a system of hate and vitriol about Hayward and then comparing him and Burks against each other. Don't say it's not true, because it is. I'm not going to do it, but I can point out specifically several account names of people that are continually spouting negativity about Hayward.

Seriously Jazz Nation...this should stop.

To have evidence and support for my point, I'm going to reference last night's game thread. There was a comment specifically said "No one here dislikes Hayward, we criticize or praise both him and Burks pretty equally I think."

That's right. YOU THINK! You think wrong. I went through the game log (as tedious as that is because going through this is just dumb in the first place) and read comments about Hayward and Burks. To my knowledge, and the aspect of hate towards Hayward, that people would even attempt to say that favoritism and equity of praise and criticism happens on these threads and for both these players (much less for all of them, or even our core) is just straight fallacious. You are wrong.

Going through, I found 11, possibly 12 comments, that were directly negative of Hayward. Straight negative. (Maybe even 13 as someone mentioned how bad the commercials were in Utah and someone made the comment about Hayward being the next "Daniel Day-Lewis. I do have to admit that I'm personally stretching with this one as I can only attempt to assume what this person was attempting to say in this comment, and whether it was sarcasm or not.)

Going through, I found 5 maybe 6 comments that could be negative of Burks. And every single comment is me stretching the perspective in an attempt to show that the comment that is quoted is really happening in a way of criticism.

First comments for Burks was someone asking why fans on SLCD call Hayward "the usurper" when Hayward was on the team before Burks, and that by logic, should Burks be the usurper. Stretch, because it was a question and not really saying anything bad about Burks.

Next comment about Burks was someone being sarcastic about how Gobert got more shot attempts than Burks at a certain time within the game.

Next was someone making a comment about how Favors and Burks say "you know" 50 times or more in an interview. Both this comment and the comment directly previous were actually about Ty.

And then there was my comment in which I said "I seriously wonder where Burks' head is at sometimes." I later said this after the comment about criticism and praise were equal, "No, no you don't. That's why I said this. I think Burks is good. I like Burks, but obviously all you are going 'Burks vs Hayward' because I never said anything about Hayward. You guys did." I did this to try and prove that people show the favoritism and negativity of Burks vs Hayward. Stretch.

Also there was the comment of "Alec missed Jeremy for the easy oop there."

After that comment, someone said "Looks pretty good to me. Burks didn't have a stellar game though." These last two comments about Burks seemed as if they were stated more of a "matter of factually" aspect than in a negative way.

But the point is that you can see that these players aren't treated the same in criticism. And in praise? Go look at the game threads. People will point out ever nifty little thing Burks does and it's overload. If Hayward does it? Sometimes it's mentioned and sometimes by several people. The name "Burks" was mentioned almost 400 times. The name "Hayward" was mentioned about 50. Excluding the one comment that had 200 "Burks" in it, literally, and you still have a grossly disproportional amount of praise being directed towards Burks.

Now I told this person that they was wrong in that people praised and criticized both Burks and Hayward equally. In reality there was the possibility that I could have been wrong on this, but my gut and everything I was reading and had been reading over the past few months was telling me I wasn't. Going over the thread showed me that the praise and criticism were NOT equal and even lop-sided in favoritism of Burks.

By many metrics Hayward is similar or better than Burks. Amar has done several posts going over metrics. I double checked Basketball reference, Hoopsdata, and ESPN. Even the new RPM has shown Hayward to be a superior player. The thing is, I'm saying that there doesn't have to be "Hayward vs Burks".

The reasons why people are calling Hayward "the usurper" and why he is receiving such negativity is because people are being illogical and are hating. Hayward makes the team better, and i'm making the claim that considering his metrics and comparisons to other players, he is around a $10 mil per year player, as of now. Market may even dictate that he is higher, probably starting around $11. Honestly, that won't break the team at all.

The biggest aspects that are hurting this team are 1, Ty and his system; 2, players around the core; 3, experience for our guys. It is not Hayward. This idiotic hate should stop. The biggest aspects that are hurting this awesome website are those people that show this hate to the players that make the team better.

All comments are the opinion of the commenter and not necessarily that of SLC Dunk or SB Nation.